I agree with you on all the cone placement advice, we should do more with less cones for sure. We even have line chalk if we want to try that out.
Without going into detail, you still have no idea how much scrutiny we are under, specifically our club, and I don’t expect you to know or make guesses; so if you’d like to know more, come talk to me in person. Good course design has very much to do with safety of workers and spectators. And lost people don’t always go slow, I’ve seen someone blow through a wall quite fast just two months ago. Nothing SCCA does has anything to do with how our national chapter manages our club and our insurance.
New people eventually (and recently) have become coaches voluntarily, and damn good ones too! We love coaches who are enthusiastic about teaching new folks, with a positive attitude, and we have many of them as regulars who not only coach, but do a ton of other things to help out. Honestly, if you don’t like the course and are complaining about it during the day…we rather just put you down as a different type of worker. The motivation for being a coach isn’t about whether you like the course or not.