Safety, always. (Then politics.)

The Pikes Peak International Hill Climb hand book is ninety-four pages long. The section on car/truck safety and construction is fifty-eight pages long, excluding diagrams. While the annual event, held since 1915, is supposed to a fun day out for motor racing enthusiasts and spectators, the safety of both the racers and spectators is paramount. Among the requirements for the safety of all the participants is that cars must have roll cages, and all drivers must possess valid competition licenses and medical insurance certificates. The organisers of the event reserve the right to reject a competitor who poses a risk to himself or others, and they are free to interpret the rule book freely in order to ensure utmost safety during the event.

A cursory examination of the fourteen-page Club Motorsports handbook for the KiambuRing TT, billed to be an incarnation of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, leaves one with a feeling of dread. It is unclear what the eligibility of the competitors is based on. The KiambuRing TT handbook claims to focus on public safety, but it remains unclear how this safety is to be achieved when the criteria for qualification remains muddled, at best. No mention is made of the requirement for roll cages, competition licenses or medical insurance certificates. It is unclear what motor racing organisation has sanctioned this event too.

This is not surprising. In Kenya the rules are for the squares, the mindless sheep following their leader, lemming-like, off a cliff. When it comes to the operation of motor vehicles, especially for sport, I believe that only the Kenya Motorsport Federation, KMSF, has the technical and organisational capacity to organise an even such as the KiambuRing TT. It may have lost a step or two since the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile, the FIA, removed the Safari Rally from the calendar of the World rally Championship, but it remains the only credible organisation with the institutional memory to oversee the complex machinery that is an event such as the KiambuRing TT.

The KiambuRing TT has been held twice, in 2013 and 2014. It has been endorsed by the Governor of Kiambu County. It is an attractive event, especially for amateur racers, owners of fast cars not built for racing. In memory of the death of a racer on the roads of Kiambu it is time that the Club Motorsports and Kenya Motorsport Federation agreed to collaborate to make the event safe for both competitors and spectators alike using the same stringent rules as those the KMSF and the FIA use.

The traditional knee-jerk reaction to tragedy is usually to ban the thing that caused tragedy. That would be a mistake. Clearly, there are people willing to risk life and limb to test their mettle in motor racing. If the government is determined to exploit their enthusiasm for revenue and publicity, the least it can do is insist on the application of the same rules of motor racing as apply elsewhere. This way, even when in practice, the lives of competitors and spectators alike will be prolonged a bit longer. (My obsession with the insidiousness of such events will not be assuaged, but at least I shall have live specimens to poke my finger in their eye.)