The Richard Petty Driving Experience Tragedy

The Richard Petty Driving Experience offered an exotic experience at the Walt Disney World Speedway from 2012-2015, in which drivers could pilot super cars like Lamborghinis, Porsches, and Ferraris. In April of 2015, a 24 year old driver and his driving instructor were involved in a horrific wreck that would end one of their lives. We’re going to take a look at the incident, those involved, and the egregious lack of safety at the track that led to the fatal injury.

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the Richard Petty Driving Experience offered an exotic experience at the Walt Disney World Speedway from 2012 to 2015 in which drivers could pilot supercars like Lamborghinis Porsches and Ferraris in April of 2015 a 24-year-old driver and his driving instructor were involved in a horrific wreck that would end one of their lives we’re going to take a look at the accident those involved and the egregious lack of safety at the track that led to the fatality in essence the Richard Petty Driving Experience is similar to The Rusty Wallace racing experience you can ride along in a NASCAR stock car for six laps for about $400 or you can take some laps around the track driving yourself to drive for about an hour it will cost you $3,000 every 8 minutes of track time you come in to do a pit stop and go back out to try to better your times which this is a pretty cool Fe feature unfortunately it seems like the Richard Petty Driving Experience has significantly cut back on what it’s doing used to you could drive supercars there were more tracks and more dates but now the experience has seemingly merged with NASCAR’s NASCAR racing experience both Services bring you to essentially the same website just with different logos this is however something very cool if it’s something that you’re interested in like I’m interested and I was actually gifted an experienced for Christmas it just doesn’t have a big Variety in terms of tracks and cars when compared to the Rusty Wallace Racing Experience according to reviews the solo drives allow you to get up to 150 mph and the ride alongs exceed 170 everyone seems to absolutely love the experience most negative reviews are about not receiving refunds due to inclement weather and a few customer service complaints to get some background information heading into the store we need to take a look at Gary Terry Gary was a second generation racer that primarily raced at the Kazo Speedway in Michigan just like his father he also competed at Berlin and actually raced an ASA race he was not a guy that was ever going to make it to the pros it’s just not an option for a lot of guys like Gary but by 2015 he had secured himself his dream job he served as the operations manager for the Richard Petty Driving EXP experience and he was a driving coach for the Exotic Driving Experience now this exotic Driving Experience has since shut down a report from the courthous news service states that the attraction closed in August of 2015 and was not related to any accidents but this Driving Experience was owned by Petty Holdings and was added in addition to the Richard Petty Driving Experience so that fans could drive Lamborghinis Porsches and Ferraris for as little as $200 there is a similar experience now called Extreme experience which includes these vehicles and has some NASCAR sanction tracks but I can’t find anything that suggests it’s owned by Petty Holdings so it seems like the Exotic Driving Experience is long gone and that petty Holdings is no longer doing a similar service so back to Gary Terry to recap he was a young man who grew up racing that had landed his dream job of being a driver instructor and an operations manager at a Driving Experience he even relocated from his home in Michigan All the Way South to Florida to make this happen however for Gary this dream would unfortunately come to an abrupt ending in April of 2015 a 24-year-old Tavon Watson went to the exotic racing experience for his birthday according to reports he had been at the racing experience before but it is unclear if he drove a car car or did a ride along the 24-year-old would pilot a Lamborghini while Gary Terry his instructor would be his co-pilot this took place at the Walt Disney Speedway which was operated by Petty Holdings as well the track held a few NASCAR truck series races and Indie Racing League races in the late ’90s but after 2000 was primarily used for the racing experience until the track closed in late 2015 Watson the driver was traveling 100 mph when he lost control of his Lamborghini he spun three times and slammed into the end of a guard R the guard R entered the passenger side of the vehicle and Gary who was sitting there was struck and pronounced dead at the scene he was just 36 years old Watson suffered only minor injuries at the time it was the third death in driving experiences across the US in just 12 months a friend of Terry’s Timothy stated it’s not the kid’s fault it’s a freak thing that happened if he thought he was in any danger he wouldn’t have done it and I agree you just don’t know what you don’t know and a safety video with a few warm-up laps doesn’t really allow untrained drivers to learn the limits of a car like this according to the Associated Press drivers watch a 5minute safety video then have a 45 minute session with an instructor to go over the track car and safety tips but that’s it to combat the lack of experience instructors have controls on their side of the car to override the driver it’s unclear if this specific car had these features but I would assume so but I haven’t found anything factual now one of the major factors that contributed to the tragedy is the fact that the car was traveling backwards on the track see when the petty experience was planning the Exotic experience they needed a Supercar track like like a road course so they just added some switchbacks in the infield of Walt Disney Speedway the cars would travel clockwise instead of counterclockwise like on the oval so Terry’s wife sued the Richard Petty racing experience for allowing drivers to do this of course the suit brought up the obvious point of allowing a guy who has never driven a race car to drive a fast car on a closed Speedway above 100 mph but it also brought up the fact that while Watson’s car was traveling clockwise on the track rather than counterclockwise the ends of the Guard rils were exposed when traveling in this direction and not cushioned the track was built to go one way then they just added in an infield part and allowed cars to travel the other way seemingly without updating safety I mean things could have been a lot different if the guardrail was properly protected and had something to cushion the impact a Florida Highway Patrol investigator St stated that if the cars were going in the proper direction like the direction of the oval the accident probably wouldn’t have been fatal and Petty Holdings was fined by OSHA for the improper guard real and knowing this is just gut-wrenching for the 24-year-old a decision from the Driving Experience to make cars go the other way and not update the safety features at least up to standard is just horrible I could not imagine the feeling this kid had and this is a weird case although I have covered crashes where one driver makes a mistake and it results in the death of another driver this one just feels a lot different it was never reported that the driver was driving above his head or extremely egregious if he was I’m sure Gary would have intervened in some way luckily Watson was never charged with any wrongdoing it is just unfortunate how this played out for all parties especially the Terry family rest in peace Gary and as for the Exotic Driving Experience it closed down just months later however it was not a result of the incident earlier in 2015 it was announced that the experience would close and with this Walt Disney World Speedway closed with it I wonder how much this played a factor in the incident were the experienced trainers leaving the company for other work did the company just halt the addition of safety features because it wouldn’t be worth it if it was just going to close in a few months where the workers discouraged and just carelessly went through the day we will probably never know anyways guys that’s it for me for this video I hope you found it interesting this was something I hadn’t heard about until I did research for the Rusty Wallace Racing Experience tragedy so I decided to look into this one if you guys enjoyed the video or found it interesting make sure you subscribe and leave a like let me know what topics you want me to cover in a few video in the comments down below and I will see you guys in the next one peace