Doublespeak

It was a clear case of attempted spin.

With damage control his obvious charge, Wayne Nosala, Legislative Director for the California Off-Road Vehicle Association, tried to paint what was a horrific, tragic ORV accident in the Mojave Desert as something that had simply been “a family affair.” The NPR interviewer wouldn’t bite.

Two days earlier eight people were killed and ten injured, including children when a tricked-out off-road truck in a Mojave desert race called the “California 200” sailed over a jump and hurtled into a crowd of spectators that were packed within 10 feet of the track, held back from the dangerous rocky course by… nothing. The truck came to a rest upside down with its oversized wheels spinning towards the sky.

The driver was unhurt, but had to escape, literally running for his life as the angry mob pelted him with rocks. Tens of thousands of people attend the California 200, in which a variety of off-road vehicles negotiate jumps and other obstacles at speeds up to 60 mph on the 50-mile off-road course that is essentially just raw desert terrain. The race had been scheduled to last through the night.

It was immediately cancelled with the accident. That souped-up jeeps and trucks, four-wheelers and dirt bikes would be allowed to tear across the desert in the first place, across fragile cryptobiotic soil, through rare desert tortoise habitat—or, unfortunately at times, through desert tortoises themselves— is another story. (See, for example, The Road-RIPorter, Vol. 14, #3, and The Road-RIPorter, Vol. 15, #1.) But to label an all-night drinking party by thousands of boisterous ORV enthusiasts a “family affair” is messaging gone bad. Swizzling beers and getting run-over by an ORV gone amok is a family affair? According to Nosala, the ORV legislative director, yes. But let’s hear it straight from him, via the NPR interview (below, Transcript from NPR’s All Things Considered from Aug. 16th, 2010.)

Robert SIEGEL (NPR): Now, I gather the California 200 is four laps around a 50-mile course. How much of the attraction is being able to be very close to those trucks, as they speed by?

Mr. NOSALA: Well, let me tell you this. The lands that they race on are public lands. They’re overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, the BLM. And there’s only four of these areas they’re allowed to race in California. And so the attraction is there’s a lot of people that come out from the city, a lot of family type people and they come out, and there’s no charge to come and spectate these events. And it’s a great atmosphere, there’s a lot of family type atmosphere.

SIEGEL: Mr. Nosala, can you just give us a sense, given where this accident took place and where it was in the course, were the people who were struck by the truck, were they in fact too close to the action? Or was it simply an unpredictable accident?

Mr. NOSALA: Over 40 years, we’ve never had an incident like this. So it’s hard to predict something like this. There’s a lot of stuff that you cannot predict. There’s been other motorsports accidents that have been similar or even more dramatic...

SIEGEL: No, but my question is this: From what I’ve read, this took place on the course right at a point called the rock pile, where the truck in question made a jump. Were the people standing there who were the victims of this unfortunate accident, were they in a place that was clearly too close to the track or are there always people there and is that where you would expect people to be?

Mr. NOSALA: There is not always people there. There’s a 50-mile long course and most of the course, there won’t be anybody lined on the course at all. Sometimes these areas do get a bit congested and maybe, yes, some of those issues should be mitigated. And surely they will be mitigated as a result of this accident.

SIEGEL: But was this a common place where people would stand to see the race, near the rock pile?

Mr. NOSALA: Yeah, in that particular racing area there is a gathering - that is a gathering spot where there is historic spectator viewing.  (author’s comment: Note direct contradiction of his previous statement; I could sense as I listened that Nosala was beginning his fall.)

SIEGEL: But could they actually walk right out on to the track, if they wanted to, for example?

Mr. NOSALA: If you wanted to, if you really wanted to walk right out on the track in front of the truck, you could. But I mean, it’s - historically, over 40 years, that’s not happened.

SIEGEL: Are you concerned about what consequences this accident might have for the sport?

Mr. NOSALA: In a way, yes. I’m just hoping that we can get through this. I think, you know, there’s been a lot of negative press and I’m trying to dispel some of the negative aspects of the sport. There’s a lot of positives to the sport. You know, it’s a family atmosphere. Usually a lot of these guys go for out for an entire week and they’ll camp out there, hang out with their family. And a lot of people come out from the big cities and sit out in the open desert and blow off a little bit of steam, have some fun around the campfire. And that’s kind of what it’s about and getting to the outdoors, getting into the dirt and getting out of the - beat of the hustle and bustle of the big city.

SIEGEL: Well, Mr. Nosala, thank you very much for talking with us about it.

Mr. NOSALA: Okay.

I heard this interview live, and Nosala’s ending “Okay” was clearly prefaced by a gulp and a hesitant, embarrassing pause that indicated he felt the interview had not gone so well.

Nosala spun and failed, but the AP story described it straight: “Aug. 14 tragedy occurred amid fans partying close to the race course,” and the LA Times ran a story on Aug. 15th: “On Saturday, hundreds of spectators had crowded around the site where the vehicle landed, some just a few feet from the main dirt track. Empty beer bottles and water bottles littered the area where the deadly incident occurred.”

Just to be clear on what was really going on, here’s a comment on the LA Times story, from their on-line comment section, from a person only identified as “brolicious:”

     “Sucks bros. Youre (sic) out in the desert just chilling, drinking natty light and icing your bros, when all of a sudden a huge bitchin offroad truck decides to appear out of nowhere and be a total buzzkill by flattening you out.”

Now, you may or may not know what “natty lights” are (Natural Light beer), but I had to look up “icing your bros,” which is apparently a drinking game with Smirnoff Ice, described this way:

     “You have to drop to one knee, and then chug the Ice in front of everyone. This is meant to embarrass you because Smirnoff Ice is, like GAY. And drinking it makes you gay in public. You will be shunned and excommunicated by your bros if you don’t, unless you perform a proper Ice Block, in which you are allowed to retrieve your bro shield.”

Like Nosala said, the California 200 desert race was a “family affair.” Really?

And next time I’ll take my partner and her 6 year-old  daughter to witness what a real ORV family affair is all about. But wait, maybe this is the true message that those of us who disagree with ORV desert/ forest/stream abusers want communicated: that ORV “family affairs” can equal drunken desert parties. For this is what it is really all about, they say, “blowing off a little steam, having some fun around the campfire.” But for some reason I don’t picture s’mores being eaten or hear “Kum  Ba Yah” being sung. Maybe Nosala really did get the right message across.

Drink. Ride. Kill. Oh yeah, and bring the kids.

— Thomas R. Petersen is Development Director for Wildlands CPR.