Falcon

After watching David's crash video I saw this thread on another site and it really makes you think about what we do and how dangerous it is. And we do it without the fore thought necessary to keep us alive and safe. Sure, we know to exit the car when things go bad, but do we think about all the possibilities and is our equipment the best for those possibilities?

The fellow who was involved in the incident in the thread gives a very accurate assessment of what happened and what he would do differently. Plus, too and also there are some very informative posts in the thread we should all heed.

63Corvette

Excellent post..............and advice. Hope none of us ever have to use it, but it's always better to "Be Prepared"

Short-Throw

Good find Jody.

Nice runoff room there, right into a mountain side!

Im amazed at how many people want to get out of their disabled car while the track is still hot. Heck, had he been able to get out, another car could have smacked into him in the process. That cage is your safety net until safety gets there or you can see the corner worker offering help or a clue.

Another example of what can go wrong whether it's a race, practice or just hot lapping.

Mike

Paul Schmidt

I know that car and that is my home track. Pacific Raceway is a very dangerous track. I always say it's a mini Nürburgring with a street course added. I too have a full containment seat and it's about to get taken out. The small size of the window and the Halo of the seat. Makes it impossible to get out with helmet and Hans. You're safety equipment could be your demise too. One thing that I've leaned about road racing is. You only get better with experience. What I mean by that, when I got my car. I had to have the full containment seat with the halo. I thought that was the best seat. Come to find out after I put it in. That I could burn up in here. How about this too. Running that seat with just a harness bar. Sometimes we kid ourselves on safety.

fatbillybob

I think the poster is drawing the wrong conclusions about the FC seats. The chances of a driver's side T bone is much higher than rollover trapped fire. His incident also fails to highlight the importance of keeping your fuel system stock and well maintained and absolutely OEM unless someone has carefully designed a proper fuel cell. I'm #88 because #88 still reads 88 when upsidedown. I had that unfortunate honor too but the FC seat made sure I was in good condition to get out of the car. People need to look at safety like chess not checkers. One thing the OP could do is run the wings on the left side and right side net and no wings on the right. That would be a compromise and allow egress if he really can't design his seat to be in a better position. For those who have lexan front windows, which I prefer but are illegal for my class, that's another way out. It does not take much to push them out.

Bill Dearborn

There are tons of what ifs you could think about. What about having a race seat in a Corvette without a roll cage? If the car rolls over the windshield pillars stand a good chance of collapsing which reduces the size of the window opening to something smaller than an adult can fit through and forces the occupants heads forward and upward as their bodies are being pulled down by gravity. Wearing a HANS would make this even more interesting.

If they survive without their necks being broken the next problem is getting out of the car. Since the window opening isn't large enough any more that means the doors have to be opened.

In a C5 a person may still be able to open the door to get out. In a C6 that may not be possible. The person inside the car more than likely can't reach the floor mounted emergency door pulls due to his body hanging upside down and in the rush of trying to get the person out nobody thinks to unlock the doors or the electrical system is out so the fire crew is having all sorts of issues trying to get the doors open.

I found out two years ago if you are in a Viper that crashes the only way out is through the doors since the stock window opening isn't large enough to get through. My helmet won't even fit through the window opening. When the door is jammed by that big one piece hood being shoved back into the door panels you are going to need some help getting out of the car.

Bill

fatbillybob

Myth! JoeMarko schroth northamerica importer outfits NASCAR teams huge athority on race safety. Dr. Melvin bioengineer worked GM racing on safety systems for years, noted authority.

http://www.justracing.com/driver_saf...topic.php?p=90

drivinhard

After watching the quantity (multiple units at various locations), and quality of the safety crews at Road America at the last NARRA event, most tracks and events I have run at now look woefully inadequate.

BERETTA

I also had this same experience last month when I ran with the SCCA, it was a national and regional meet. This was the first time that I have ran with them, I immediately noticed 3-5 workers in every flag stand, most with headsets. I had an off and clogged my air opening with grass, as I was coming to a stop because the temp was rising, a little steam was coming from the hood, workers were on me and my car by the time i got stopped. They were running toward the car with extinguishers in hand. Needless to say I was very impressed with there immediate response.

fatbillybob

SCCA has more than that. They have a medical director who must ensure that all safety gear is in place before the raceweekend can begin. There is on site advanced cardiac life support. They own their own tow trucks and have trained crew to man them. They have 5mill in participant liability insurance as an additional insures. They do the minimum 2 man cornerstations so nothing is missed upstream or downstream.

varkwso

It varies with region...

Bill Dearborn

Actually it isn't a myth. I watched a C6Z drop off the tire wall at Watkins Glen onto its roof. The instructor who was in the car is about 6'2". When the car dropped the A pillar on his side collapsed. The car was equipped with stock belts and as the roof came up and rearward his head was pushed forward and up at the same time his body was pushing down on his neck. He figures the only thing that saved him was the fact the stock 3 point allowed his body to pivot forward across the shoulder belt. If he had been held in place by a race harness and a race seat his body would not have moved forward and his head would have been trying to keep the roof from crushing in. As it was he had a spinal compression injury that didn't start bothering him until a day or so later. I posted this picture before but you can definitely see there wasn't any room on his side if he had remained upright.


The B pillar and roof halo held up fine and the only damage in that area were some scratches. The problem is you don't sit under the halo but in front of it, right about where the roof is starting to bend downwards.

The instructor is standing on the right.

You have to remember he had a helmet on which took up some of the free space between his head and the roof. I know my helmet adds 2.25 inches to my height so if his helmet did about the same then the helmet was very close to being in contact with the roof while he was just sitting in the car.

Yes a race harness (depending on how tight the lap belts were adjusted) may not have let his body drop quite as much but that probably wouldn't have changed anything.

Bill

drivinhard

that is another reason my dash and cluster (custom) are very low (visability), and my seat as low as I can get it (currently). and I plan to get my seat even lower...

froggy47

I missed that picture earlier. That surprises me to have such a dramatic collapse of the A pillar, where otherwise the damage seems much less.

I'm sure GM made the A pillar stronger from c5 to c6 but damn, it makes you wonder?

BuckeyeZ06

I am happy my incident has prompted this debate. The things I do for your guys...

I tell people all the time, racing is a relatievely safe sport if you do things right. What I mean by that is that we have to adopt a proper respect for what we are doing and plan accordingly.

Safety needs to be a focus all the time. Unfortunately I see too many people in HPDE and TT groups that are not properly focused on the safety.

I get grief from people when they see my wreck. They can't believe I willingly am getting back into a race car after that. I tell them I could get killed doing ordinary things.

Case in point: After my wreck I have a bruised tailbone and some black n blue marks where the "5th and 6th" belts of my 6-point harness meet my body . Other than that, and my thinner wallet, nothing is wrong with me.

Well, this past weekend a co-worker went fishing...fishing guys. Ya hear what I am saying? He fell INTO the fishing boat (I don't know how that happened) and has a 9 inch gash on his leg.

I smack a cement wall at 100+ MPH then cartwheel 5 times and walk away with less bodiyl injury than he does after he goes fishing...go figure.

You have to do it right. Safety needs to be a focus.

Rant off.

AU N EGL

Much safer then any belt-line highway around a major city at rush hours

Bill Dearborn

The car hit the tire wall with the right front corner and sort of lifted up the wall until it was hanging on it and not touching the ground. When it came to a stop I thought it was going to hang there and was about to tell my student to stay far to the left and drop his speed some. Just then the car fell and did a half turn upside down after it landed on its roof. I suspect it dropped at least 4 foot right onto that corner. The rest of the damage on the right side was from hitting the wall and the driver side damage was from when they turned the car back onto its wheels. If the A pillar hadn't collapsed and it had been my car I would have driven the car home since other than the air bags being deployed and the right headlight being pulled out of the car it was still an operable car.

Bill

froggy47

That puzzles me even more then. It was a very slow motion hit to the A pillar and it bent like a wet noodle? It must have been a perfect concentration of all the weight of the car on that precise edge in an instant.

I thought those A pillars combined with the halo were pretty tough.

fatbillybob

Bill,

REspectufully, I don't think draw a conclusion from one datapoint in a vaccum. What about all the people in wrecks who's injury was prevented by a racing seat and harness? Just the shear number of those crashes vs. a rollover crash would lead one to believe that for every guy in a roolover with a hurt neck I'll find you 2 guys who crashed (did not roll) and the seat and harness helpped them. But that is just our meaningless chatter. I Listen to the pros like Joe Marko and Dr. Melvin. They have been around the block and very long time experts in the safety field making decisions with real data. Without these guys we would still be using horsecollars instead of HANS.

Bill Dearborn

I am not saying to draw any conclusions from a single data point. However, that data point does prove the situation can happen. Not a lot of Vettes roll over but you do have to consider what happens if they do and how that figures in the odds Vs crashing into a wall or another car. I listen to Joe as well. I have attended two of his seminars and have learned a lot. One thing he does is stress proper use of Safety Equipment according to manufacturers directions. He also stresses the OEMs 3 point systems are damned good at protecting a car's occupants.

How do we know any of our back yard engineered and built solutions are as good? We don't. We don't crash test our cars to find out if a reinforcing bar was installed in the proper place or even built correctly we just do a best guess and hope our's or somebody else's guess based on previous experience is correct.

I wish I could take the visual memories of the incident and make a video that shows how innocuous the whole thing looked when I first saw the car in an unusual position on the track and seemingly not going all that fast. I can remember saying "NO, NO, NO" as I watched it happen. As my student drove by I didn't observe that the roof had collapsed that far. It was only after seeing the car in the WGI crash lot and talked to the Instructor that I realized how much worse the issue had been.

Another thing to think about is the they had a hell of a time getting out of the car with the stock seats in the car. They had to crawl out of the driver side window. I know my race seat makes it harder to enter and egress when the car is sitting on its wheels. What would it be like when it is upside down and I am trying to crawl out of a window that is partially blocked by the seat shoulder support. That is one of the reasons I lost 60 lbs since then. Not so much lard to get hung up on things.

Bill