If you’re unfamiliar with the ways of “Street Outlaws,” the series documents actual drag races featuring muscled-up automobiles like those on display in the “Fast & the Furious” franchise. These races are, however, conducted on closed stretches of road, with the production required to have proper permits to operate legally. Every episode of “Street Outlaws” opens with a title card warning that street racing is dangerous. That title card also notes every race seen in the series is conducted “with strict safety protocols in place.”
Despite that claim, the suit filed by the Fellows family against Warner Bros. Discovery and their partners contends the production may have ignored those protocols on the night Ryan Fellows died, alleging that the fateful race was conducted on a “dusty, weather-beaten, rough asphalt roadway” outside of Las Vegas. The suit further alleges the race site “didn’t meet any of the industry safety standards” for drag racing. Perhaps more damning, the suit also claims producers had already overseen several other crashes on the same stretch of road and repeatedly elected not to move the races to a safer location.
Whatever the case, it may be some time before there is any resolution to the legal proceedings brought by the Fellows family. However matters play out in the courtroom, Ryan Fellows’ death will likely hang over the “Street Outlaws” franchise for many years to come — even as the franchise continues without him.
