Imagine you are a race car driver in the Indianapolis 500 automobile race. How would you deal with the inherent risks associated with this sport? How would you deal with the possibility of crashing, even dying, on that track?

According to one driver, you don’t. “[If a fatal accident occurs,] you don’t go look at where it happened. You don’t watch the films of it on television. You don’t deal with it. You pretend it never happened.”

The Indianapolis International Speedway operation itself encourages this approach. As soon as the track closes the day of an accident, a crew heads out to paint over the spot where the car hit the wall. Through the years, a driver has never been pronounced dead at the race track. A trip to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Racing Museum, located inside the 2.5‑m…