Now that the spoiler's out...

The thread I mentioned ^^^ among autocrossers started when someone -- I think he was the chief safety steward -- talked about the responsibilities and procedures for course workers. These are the guys who are out on the lot, standing in a relatively safe place, keeping an eye on the cars as they go by to call in cone penalties & missed gates (off course), and repositioning cones that get knocked down.

The chief worker at each station carries a radio and a red flag. If the course needs to be stopped, they have to get every driver's attention with their flags. However, there were a couple instances at a recent event where not every car already on course was stopped as quickly as they would've liked. Nobody hit anybody, but nobody wanted to take any chances later, and the duties needed to be restated.

One main point that was made was that, in order to see a red flag, the corner worker has to get out there, somewhere near the marked course, and wave it like a madman. The drivers are focusing on their racing line very intently, and they might not notice anything that's off to the side.

Another club member talked about how she took part in a nearly identical test in college for a psychology class. She and a few classmates sat down to watch a video, and were told to count the number of passes made by the people playing basketball on a gymnasium court. They watched, counted, and gave their answer when the student giving the test said, "That's good, but did you see the gorilla?" ... huh?? Not a single one of them remembered anything about a gorilla. They rewound the video, and plain as day, some guy in a gorilla suit walked into the middle of the action, danced a bit, did some jumping jacks, and walked out of the frame.