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I watched the 2005 Wales Rally Great Britain last night. It was going like gangbusters, with Sébastien Loeb on par to strengthen his lead in the World Rally Championship. He was storming away with the victory, well ahead of Petter Solberg and Marcus Grönholm. Marcus was swearing like a Finnish pirate after losing his brakes on the first day and Colin McRae (no relation to my lovely wife) was making his triumphant return to Rally. It was shaping up to be an historic event.

Then I fast-forwarded past the commercial break after the second day (WRC events span three days) and noticed that there were only about five minutes left in the recording. Normally, as one would imagine, the last day takes up at least a third of the hour and a half broadcast, and not five minutes.

The reason for this was tragic: Markko Martin crashed heavily, and in the accident his co-driver, Michael Park, died.

It always comes as a shock when a driver (or co-driver, in the case of WRC) dies in the course of a race. Automobile racing is amongst the most dangerous sports in the world, and even though efforts have been made in recent times to make all aspects of the sport safer, it still involves hurtling heavy machinery around a course at high speed. Rally cars can hit 200kph. NASCAR, around 300. Formula One cars, well over 350. Bring those speeds down to zero in a fraction of a second and you’re going to cause some kind of damage to the human wrapped up in that metal, fiberglass and carbon fibre shell. Unfortunately, at times, there’s a death.

And to some extent we, the fans, are to blame. NASCAR fans watch for the Big One — the big wreck that inevitably comes every race, taking out a quarter of the field. Formula One fans always know that Turn One is ripe for accidents. To some extent there’s a thrill of seeing cars get demolished at high speeds. And whenever safety measures come into place that inhibit or stifle speed and competition, fans generally get in an uproar. For the most part, the safety measures are important and necessary, and regardless of the bitching and complaining, most people agree with their intent. Nobody wants to see a return of the horrible crashes of Formula One, where cars and drivers went careening through crowds of spectators. Nobody wants to see drivers be airlifted by helicopter to the nearest hospital.

Yet the crashes are exciting. Thrilling. They’re a part of the sport, and they make the sport fun to watch. It’s amazing to see a car roll at 250kph, yet also see the driver walk away when the car comes to a standstill against a tirewall. Watching sidepods explode in a blizzard of carbon fibre, watching tires blow out, watching cars tumble into a forest and catch fire, that’s fun.

But crashes are fun only when nobody’s seriously injured. Crashes don’t need to involve death. They shouldn’t involve death. The sport doesn’t need another Ayrton Senna, another Dale Earnhardt, another Greg Moore. And this weekend, motorsport has to do the unfortunate task of adding another name to the list: Michael Park.

We can only hope that the list doesn’t get longer any time soon.