Burning Man year that the event was held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert with no fence around it. Before the event opened to the public in 1996, a worker named Michael Furey was killed in a motorcycle crash while riding from Gerlach, Nevada, to the Burning Man camp in the Black Rock Desert. Harvey insisted that the death had not occurred at Burning Man, since the gates were not yet open. Another couple was run over in their tent by an art car driving to "rave camp," which was at that time distant from the main camp. After the
Burning Man Francisco County Superior Court. On June 30, 2009, the California Court of Appeal for the First District upheld the trial court's grant of summary judgment to Black Rock City, LLC on the basis that visitors who deliberately walk towards the Burning Man after it is lit assume the risk of getting burned by such an obviously hazardous object. On September 3, 2017 a 41-year-old man, Aaron Joel Mitchell, fought his way past a safety cordon of volunteers and firefighters and threw himself into the flames of the primary Burning Man effigy. Mitchell died the next day due to cardiac arrest,