In the Netherlands you are never more than half an hour away from a go-kart track – villages that have been forgotten by society are not included. That’s great, because everyone can do a heat kart for less than 20 euros. And although it is good that everyone can indulge in this basic necessity of life, it also brings small frustrations with it. Because even though everyone can kart, it doesn’t mean everyone can karting. That’s why karts should get a horn. We explain why.
It is completely justified that not everyone comes to the kart track with their own helmet or gloves to hunt for the weekly record. And logically, because you come here primarily for fun. At least that’s what we’ve been told. The problem is that the moment the helmet (preferably with some residual sweat from your predecessor) slips over the head, many people forget that they have a sternocleidomastoid. This is the muscle that turns your head, Wikipedia taught us.
The blue flag is ignored
The marshalls on the go-kart track can explain the blue flag as well, in practice 80 percent of the drivers do not pay attention to the flags and they certainly do not look around. If you are just doing a nice lap, this brute can be disrupted by a zigzagging fellow rider who thinks that drifting could be even faster. The result is that at the end of the session you have to fall back on the reasoning that your buddy is ‘lighter and therefore faster’.
Overtaking and driving through traffic is part of the charm of karting on a public track. Choosing a good point to overtake or brake later is also part of racing. The problem is that inexperienced drivers can drive quite unpredictably. And there are few things more frustrating than being left behind for two laps behind a sluggish karter that refuses to pull over. It wouldn’t be nice of us to claim that this is why tailgating was invented, so we won’t.
Karts should get a horn – or mirrors
The solution is simple. Give the karts a subtle horn so that you can kindly yet urgently request that the person in front of you pull over. Mirrors would also be a good solution, but they probably wouldn’t last longer than three sessions. Or maybe something like a silent horn that lights up a blue light on the steering wheel of your predecessor. After all, we also have to think a bit about the staff.
#Karts #public #tracks #horn #mirrors