Debbie Reed is a name very familiar to Aussie drag racing fans, but maybe not so for North American straight line followers. She’s been in the sport for 30 years and is a successful Top Alcohol dragster down in the southern hemisphere. She recently suffered one of the worst crashes we’ve seen in some time. Thankfully she’s recovering and it appears that she’ll be ok.
In looking at the footage, the sequence of events couldn’t really be any worse from the perspective of the driver. The car gets loose and skates around on the top end. Reed makes a nice correction to bring the car back in line and then it makes a violent move towards the wall and there’s little that Reed could do to stop it.
Terminal velocity crashes like this are certainly the scariest for race officials and safety people, but the engineering and safety rules included in the construction of modern race cars help people like Debbie Reed survive crashes that have been 100% fatal only a couple decades back.
Hit the play button below to see the crash and an interview with Debbie Reed’s husband.
