Sports Letter: Senna's legacy

Sir: Michael Schumacher apparently survived last weekend's Silverstone crash because of the advances in car design following the death of Ayrton Senna. The implication is that lessons were learned and that as technology improved, cars became safer.

The question I ask myself is not why Schumacher lived, but why Senna died. Niki Lauda almost burned to death behind the wheel of his car. Were lessons learned from that? Was an improving technology applied to subsequent racing cars? I hope so and I hope that the reason Senna died and Schumacher lived was not that lessons were learned from Senna's death, but because technology has vastly improved since. I'd hate to think all that improving technology was only applied to cars after Senna's high profile fatality.