JONESBORO — In conjunction with the Clayton County Police Department and the Georgia Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, NASCAR Cup Series driver Ross Chastain appeared at Tara Stadium Friday to talk about driver safety and the importance of buckling up.
“(On the track) I’m fully confident if we crash — and there will be crashes — that these cars we have are designed to crash at these speeds,” Chastain said. “We’ve got these safety harnesses to hold us in, HANS (head and neck support) devices to hold our heads, helmets, fireproof suits. Everything about the car is built to crash but when I get on the road to go to the airport or coming in this morning, getting on the red-eye from Phoenix I get in the Chevy Suburban — my rental car — and I buckle my seatbbelt just like everybody else. Then I’m relying on the airbags and seat belts and if I don’t put that seat belt on I’m not doing myself any favors. The single best thing we can do is buckle out seat belts. It takes two seconds and that can be the single thing that saves your life.”
As a professional race car driver, Chastain goes insane speeds on the track but he said off the track, it’s a different story.
“I’m bit of a slow driver honestly — it’s kind of funny,” he said. “I actually prefer to ride. I would much rather ride and I’m bit of a backseat driver though. I will critique the driver if they’re doing little errors. I get my need for speed on the track. That’s important too that people that like to drive fast — it’s OK but there are avenues to do it. There’s ways to do it on a closed course and not on a highway. There’s too much risk and too many lives at risk on the highway — the speeding isn’t going to help that. We already have enough crashes; we have too many crashes as it is. Especially after the race, it does feel…
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