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I just want to mention the great safety advances in car (and race) security in the last 20 years; since 1994 and the deaths of Ratzenberger and Senna there has been no driver fatalities in F1 racing.

edit "Following Senna's death in 1994, no driver had died from injuries sustained in a World Championship-related accident until María de Villota died in 2013 from complications of injuries she sustained in a testing accident the previous year"

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It is quite remarkable. For example, the Kubica crash in 2007 looked absolutely horrific, but he walked away with only minor injuries.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=685_1181547684

I was in the stands in the hairpin when I saw Kubica go flying by. Seeing his head bobbing from side to side made me think that he was dead. I managed to capture some pics of the crash and wrote a blog post about it, and other racing accidents.

http://blog.octanenation.com/kubica-accident-pictures-an-aut...

Even the de Villota death was a huge huge fluke. She lost control of the car outside of the track (no idea why she was driving outside of the track) and hit a moving trucks lift face first. If she had just ran into a wall on the track there is basically no chance she would have died.

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