First a disclaimer.  Whenever I write anything about driver’s door hits, I inevitably rile up someone, some team, or some officials.  Driver’s door hits are by far the most sensitive topic surrounding any demolition derby event, but especially so in the Team Demo Association (TDA).  No driver wants to be accused of delivering a driver’s door hit or throwing his driver’s door.  I almost always receive hate mail whenever I even raise the suggestion that a driver’s door might have occurred.  It’s just become ingrained.  When I write about insurance issues, I don’t hear anything.  When I write about driver’s doors, the flood gates open. I don’t expect this column to be much different.  And I’m fine with that.  But see if you can get through this piece with an open mind, because there is a major problem with driver’s doors… and, uniquely, it has absolutely nothing to do with anything that transpires on the track.

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In the first round of the TDA’s Third Night, Mean Green Machine and the Junkyard Dogs were doing battle in a fierce fought race.  JYD’s Ryan Riley (#3) was handily in the lead and coming down the back straightaway, working to complete his fourth lap.  Mean Green’s Zac VanAllen (#17) saw Riley coming and went to stop him.  VanAllen then hit Riley on the driver’s side of his car, near/in the driver’s door.  The hit snapped Riley’s steering column and took him out.  Mean Green’s Andrew Sherman (#11) took full advantage of this to collect another couple of laps himself and win the race.

VanAllen’s hit was one of the most impactful actions of the evening.  If you asked me why Mean Green Machine won that race, my first thought would be: because Van Allen took out Riley.

And the other drivers, especially those on Junkyard Dogs, are pissed off about it.  In their eyes, VanAllen’s hit was a blatant and obvious driver’s door hit and one that should have both disqualified him and his team from the race.  “Are you going to write about how the TDA is fucking over 3?” I was asked by one TDA official.  I told that official that I’d look into it.

In the eyes of VanAllen and his teammates on Green, the hit was legal and well within the boundaries of fair play.*  As VanAllen told me, his point of impact on Riley’s car was well in front of the driver’s door.  Other people concurred with this statement and argued that after impact, VanAllen’s bumper then slid into Riley’s driver’s door.

* Since the league has not weighed in in any manner, shape or form other than to allow VanAllen and Mean Green Machine to keep racing, we are left to assume that the hit was a legal hit in their eyes.

So, depending on who you talk to, it was either a horrible driver’s door hit that should have been grounds for disqualification or a fantastic shot that should be praised for its effectiveness.  Therein lies the major problem with driver’s door hits in the TDA: with absolutely no one knows what they look like because the league has not done anything to define the matter.*

* And when I say the league hasn’t done anything, I mean it.  The TDA rulebook doesn’t even state that driver’s door hits are illegal.  It states more broadly that any shot to any door is grounds for disqualification if it’s intentional.  Click here to read rule #56.

In my time watching the TDA, I’ve noticed three different types of driver’s door hits.  (And it’s certainly possible there are more that I’m not thinking of at present).

DRIVER’S DOOR HIT TYPE #1: The Complete Accident

This is probably the most common type of driver’s door hit.  Driver A will spend across the track with the hope of hitting Driver B’s passenger side cowl.  Another driver will tap Driver B’s back bumper spinning him around so that, by the time Driver A arrives with a full head of steam, Driver B’s driver’s door is facing Driver A.  This is what happened when Orange Crush’s Carl Brouwer was hit in the driver’s door.

DRIVER’S DOOR HIT TYPE #2: The Unexpected Movement

This is where Driver A is making a beeline for Driver B and Driver B stops and starts backing into the middle of the track, causing Driver A to crash into Driver B’s driver’s door.  This is not a matter of victim blaming, it’s a matter of expectations.  Consider what would happen if you were cruising along the street at 30 mph behind another driver who just randomly stopped in the middle of an intersection with a green light.  You’d have to work extremely hard not to rear end the guy.  Why?  Because no one expects a car to randomly stop in the middle of an intersection with a green light.  Mean Green Machine’s Matt “Opie” Pierce was hit with in a scenario something like this.

DRIVER’S DOOR HIT TYPE #3: The “I was aiming at something else and missed!”

Sure, this sentiment is probably is true across the board with all driver’s door hits, but sometimes it’s its own form of hit unto itself.  When dealing with cars going at speeds up to 45 mph, it’s not unheard of for a driver to mistime something by two feet and end up crashing into a driver’s door as opposed to the cowl.  It happens.

So those are the three types of driver’s door hits that I’ve witnessed.  The one type of driver’s door hit that you’ll notice is conspicuously absent from that list is the intentional driver’s door hit.  Say what you will about the drivers, but as a group, they absolutely, positively do not want to hurt one another.*  They want to race well and they want to win, but they do not want to hurt anyone.

* … on the track.  They don’t want to hurt anyone on the track.  Fights in the pits are a different matter. 

Since, to the best of my knowledge, there has not been an intentional driver’s door hit in the six years I’ve been following the TDA, the league’s decision to penalize intent is a tad unusual, made patently ridiculous given the draconian punishment attached it.

Let me explain.  When dealing with punishments, it’s always easier to dole out small sentences than big ones.  Partially because there’s less aggrievement associated with receiving a smaller penalty and partially because, when handing out big penalties, the judge in question has to be incredibly sure that the guilty party is both guilty and deserving of the larger punishment.  Given that no one ever really intentionally tries to hit another car in the driver’s door and the fact that no one is quite sure what constitutes a driver’s door hit in the first place, it seems like a pipe dream to think that anyone will ever be penalized for an illegal hit.

There are two distinct parts in this situation: there’s the crime and there’s the punishment.  As it stands currently, the league has a huge, well defined penalty in place (team disqualification) for an offense that isn’t tangible; the crime isn’t whether a driver did something or not, but rather whether he meant to.

This is somewhat backwards and it provides ample opportunities for bickering and fighting.  Since simply hitting an opponent in the driver’s door isn’t grounds for disqualification, Junkyard Dog fans and drivers have to prove that VanAllen meant to hit Riley in the door.  “He didn’t cut his engine!” one person told me.  That was the most polite explanation I received.  It’s not hard to understand how situations like these could or would quickly devolve into ‘____________ is an asshole.’  I mean, to prove your case, labeling someone as an asshole would actually be quite helpful!  Of course ___________ would mean to hit another driver in the driver’s door… he’s an asshole!

The problem with this can neatly be summed up by this hypothetical.  Suppose for a moment that pointing a gun at someone was perfectly legal, but that pointing a gun at someone menacingly was illegal and an offense that could get you thrown in jail for ten years.  Who the hell is to say what is and isn’t ‘menacingly’?  To the person pointing the gun, it’s all in good fun!  To the person on the business end of the gun, it’s all menacing.

The easiest way to clear this up would simply be to transfer the onus of the law off of the intent and onto the action. There is absolutely no confusion at that point.  Suddenly, it doesn’t matter how you point the gun at someone, it just matters whether or not you pointed the gun at someone.  And that’s pretty easy to discern.

The reason that the TDA is in a bad spot here is because it can’t make rule #56 any more clear without weighing in on what constitutes a driver’s door hit.  What I find most fascinating about the whole thing is that the TDA rulebook has put the bad act (the punishable offense) before the actual crime.  To stick with the VanAllen/Riley example, VanAllen knew as he accelerated across the track whether or not he was aiming for Riley’s door—for the record, he wasn’t—and, according to the TDA, that would have been the bad act.  And it would have been committed well before VanAllen’s front end connected with Riley’s car.

As an aside, it’s also kind of funny that rule #56 only allows a team to be penalized for driver’s door hits that take place.  If the bad act is intent—and it is, it is explicitly stated as such—then it seems to me that a driver tearing around the track trying to hit people in the driver’s door should also be penalized, but I digress.

After VanAllen hit Riley, an utter shitstorm unfolded.  The Junkyard Dogs were fuming, VanAllen was upset that he delivered what he (and the league) deigned a legal hit and was on the receiving end of all kinds of accusations and nothing was ultimately resolved in any way.  The parties involved just sort of stopped talking about the hit on social media, with some drivers making a statement to the effect of, “Well, if the league says that’s legal, then that’s what I’m going to do next race!”

While I kind of doubt any drivers are going to follow through on this—it will require actually crashing into another racer’s driver’s door—it’s still not exactly a comforting thought to hear.  For a league as seemingly concerned about safety as the TDA is, it’d be nice to hear their thoughts on the VanAllen/Riley hit and why they viewed it as legal.  I’m not arguing VanAllen’s hit was illegal, I just think it’d be a great learning experience to hear the officials thoughts on it.  Drivers could gain insight from the feedback and potentially use that information to fine tune their driving to avoid future driver’s door hits.

As it is however, we’re simply left arguing whether drivers who may or may not have hit someone in the driver’s door are assholes.  When the only way to prove your point is character assassination, maybe it’s time to look at tweaking the wording of the rule a bit.