Professor's novel idea to avoid the false start DQ like what happened to Devon Allen

What is used for auto drag racing? Green light. No more estimating what the average man can hear. The instant the light turn green sprinters can sprint. No more estimating. When we go to light, I do not want scientists to get involved estimating the speed of light 30m in front of sprinter and reaction time to speed of light.

Nice. Agreed. F**k the proletariat.

Drag racing has a christmas tree with a pre stage bulb, a second pre stage bulb, 3 amber lights then a green light. The pre stage bulb and and second bulb are activated by infrared sensors as the cars creep into position. When both cars are in position the tree basically counts down by activating the the amber lights at a set time until the light turns green. Depending on if its a pro tree or a sportsman tree a legal reaction time is either .4 seconds or .5 seconds vs the .1 for track and field. The reaction time in drag racing is a combination of the time the driver takes to react, the time the car takes to react and the car moving far enough forward that it is past the infrared beams thus turning off the pre stage bulbs. Drag racing separates the reaction time from the run time. In drag racing there is is a term called a holeshot where a car with a slower run times wins because they reacted faster and the total time added together from reaction and run time is is quicker. That is way more complicated then track and field.

Drag racing lights are not more complicated than T&F start, just different. I could write 500 words on the accuracy of equipment used in T&F and likelihood D. Allen did not false start but equipment was functioning outside of SD.

Swimming has already solved this problem - just saying...

What do they do?

What’s wrong with anticipating the gun anyway?

If someone anticipates the start successfully why are they penalized? A start of 0.01 is after the gun, so it should be legal. If they jump early , then they get the red flag. Just the price of taking a chance.

This is by far the simplest solution. Sometimes someone might get lucky, but mostly you get DQ'd if you're trying to anticipate the gun.

Track and field doesn’t have a starting problem, the world championships had a technical problem. They need to figure out why this meet was different and fix that, instead of looking for a new system.

That's correct. It was ONE problem at ONE meet with ONE specific timing system.

I predict the problem will be fixed at the next World Championship in 2023 without the timing company or World Athletics ever admitting that they screwed up in Eugene.

How about no reaction time nonsense and if you go before the gun you get DQ'd. Seem simple enough.

And the random timed gun idea is stupid. The starter is supposed to fire the pistol once all the runners are set. It's not supposed to be random with the runners sitting there with there butts in the air for a random length of time based on an algorithm.

Simply go back to one false start on the field the next a DQ, that will work.

How about a starting gate? A system holds and releases your foot in the blocks before and after the gun fires?

Reaction time would still be important. But it would be fun to watch false starters fall over.

I hope the meets plan in one false start per 100m/h event if they go back to this.

If I was a slow starter, I’d false start every time on the first gun to put the pressure on everyone else on the second try.

Do it this way. Take away the RT penalty (still DQ an actual false start though) but start the clock per individual runner, either when they've cleared the blocks or their chest breaks the plane of the start/finish line. The tech exists to do that.

Do this for the jumps too, just use a machine to calculate exactly where they took off instead of making them take off from the board.

I'm probably in the minority, but I'd give everyone in the field one false start.

I didn't mind the races where they had three or four false starts, I always thought it built the tension, made the race more exciting.

And that is exactly why it went away. It got to where at some meets every single sprint race had a false start because people were gaming the system to set up anyone on the second start. I remember watching meets where that happened over and over and over. It was awful.