I never have liked motor sports. For a lot of reasons.

The main one is this:

It gets people killed.

Scott Kalitta, a two-time Top Fuel champion, was killed during a qualifying Funny Car run in New Jersey on Saturday.

You can read the news story here. Basically, you can’t put people in a fire suit and reinforced tub and send them off at high speed and not expect that some of those people will end up dead. And that is fun to watch … how?

The gearhead people were talking about it as a “freak accident” … the same language they always use when they kill another of their own. I’m not sure any death in motors history has been allowed to be anything other than a “freak accident.” Otherwise motor sports would have to own up to “yeah, we’re gonna kill some people,” and they can’t go there.

The reality of motors is this: Aside from boxing, motor racing is the only sports where death is an accepted part of doing business. Scott Kalitta dead? Oops, sorry. And the show goes on.

Let’s not even get into how many people buy tickets or watch telecasts waiting/hoping for ugly wrecks. Though we know they exist.

I’m just sick of motors. It’s so 20th century. Deafening, wasteful, environmentally disastrous, pointlessly dangerous. Sometimes fatal.

I wrote it more than two decades ago: It would be zero loss for the world if the entire motor sports industry disappeared.

Another guy is dead, and motors apologists will try to reduce it to some ultra long-shot event … and somebody else will die next month or next year. In front of paying customers.

That’s entertainment?