I agree that a certain amount of danger is inevitable - or even desirable - in motor sport. What gets at me is the blissful ignoring of how "improvements" have drastically increased this danger. Speed was controlled by the road surface and shape in many places - for example along the Cronk-y-Voddy straight the bumps slammed your back and at times gave me double vision (!) but now it is like a billiard table, so the rider arrives at the next bend going faster, so that gets smoothed...and so on. Quarry Straight used to be Quarry Bends, with bumps, sticking-out kerbs, a bit of off-camber and had to be treated with respect i.e. roll off the throttle a bit. There are many other parts of the course that have been spoilt in this way. Couple this with the massive increase in power of the modern bike, where anyone can buy from any dealer a standard sports machine with much higher performance potential than a full-blown works machine of only a few years ago and the skill level required needs to be similarly higher than that shown by such greats as Hailwood, Ago, Duke et al. Look at the speedtrap results for a few years back and compare them to today and you will see what I mean.
There does come a point when the odds on the probability of a crash become unacceptably high - read the accounts by the aces of how such-and-such a power increase "added four more corners" to a section, yet no move has been made to restrict power output, or weight. There is a point when a rider no longer has control - and by control I mean the ability to change direction or speed - because of the inertia generated by this combination of weight and speed, and an out-of-control motorcycle can be a lethal weapon.
I do not know what could be done to start reversing this increased danger - restrict tyres to one set, treaded, have a weight limit/power output/lower capacity limit - but the worrying thing to me is that there is no discussion about if anything should be done.
The days of "send the 125s out and see how many get killed so we know if we can start the 500s" may be gone, but there must be some serious decisions made - and soon - if the event is to survive.
I forgot to just, with respect, take Señor Loughbridge to task re Barry Sheene - whilst a real fan of this man, the truth is that he (maybe rightly) had never wanted to race the TT and felt forced into it by the desire for World Championship points, did not have the time or inclination to go through the essential 2-3 year apprenticeship before being competitive, and in any case had only travelled from the start to Quarter Bridge before finding the first safe bail-out spot, so could hardly be honestly in third place! If he had only let me take over his ride on the Suzuki.............