If you were to look at some of the most prominent names in the world of automobile racing, Mercedes is likely going to stick out like a sore thumb because of the fact that this is one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world so it is understandable that its cars would have a high level of prestige once all has been said and is now out of the way. That said, did you know that Mercedes stopped racing between the years of 1955 and 1987?
The reason behind this is that there was a race crash that occurred in 1955 that resulted in 87 people dying and twice that number getting injured. The way that this happened was that one driver was pulling in for a pit stop while a driver that was behind him ended up crashing into him at a really high speed. The speed was so high that the car went flying into the crowd and that’s when dozens of people lost their lives and so many were injured that the future of the sport itself came into question.
This crash made it dangerous for Mercedes to continue racing since having their name associated with so much destruction would obviously make them a great deal less financially viable than might have been the case otherwise. They eventually came back to the world of racing in 1987 after better safety measures were implemented, but the 1955 La Mans crash is still a sobering example of what can happen when competitive spirit ends up surmounting our baseline desire to keep the various people around us as safe as we can no matter what we desire from them.
