I was watching a rallying dvd highlights from the 80's last night, which included the catastrophic and tragic loss of life of 4 spectators in Portugal back in 1988...iirc.
The do gooders were initially blaming the sheer power of the then group B cars, but in all honesty, the suicidal tendencies of the speccies over there really had to be seen to be believed!
Drivers blasting around a corner at over 100mph to be faced with a wall of humans swiftly parting on both sides to leave a narrow gap for the cars to race through.
Not nice to watch, and extremely difficult to understand the mentality of these absolute idiots.
Litt;e wonder that all of the top teams withdrew from that particular event as a mark of respect and of course to send out a strong message to the organisers to clean their act up.
Trouble is, some of them (mainly the MSA in GB) have taken it completely over the top now, and whacked obscene charges on top for the speccies as well.