Yeh, you can not sign away your rights to protection you would expect.
We took my FF1600 VanDiemen out to Seattle International Raceway (now called Pacific Receway) for a test session. I paid my money and signed their waiver, we got the car ready and I drove a slow observation lap. When I came out of the last turn where the road course joins the drag strip there was a chain across the track, which I saw and stopped. If I had been going at speed I would have been a dead man.
I was pretty pissed at the track for leaving that chain up and went into the office to complain and suggest they had a
little bit of responsibility to keep the track safe; they just sort of looked at me like I was stupid and shrugged their shoulders without any sort of apology. After all, I
had signed the waiver absolving them of any responsibility. They certainly would have lost a big lawsuit.