I am glad NYRA installed it this year. It's the best rail ever invented, and has protected dozens of jockeys in spills.
But I had remembered that back in the day, after a Cordero spill, NYRA actually claimed their old 1930's technology slant rails were safe enough. They took another 25 years to finally get with the program.
Here's NYRA saying "we don't need no Fontana rail" in 1992.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/26/sp...-is-asked.html
(California got Fontana safety rails in the 1990's and 2000's, and had an earlier version of the same technology all the way back in the 1960's.)
