Mini Challenge Crash at QLD Raceway - Spectator Safety

[STEALTHY]

Originally Posted by NewsStalker

Wrong - the only way you can make 100% safe is to not hold ANY form of motor sport at the venue.

Not sure how much you know about concrete, but if its 100 feet high and encasing the whole track, there is 0% chance of a car ending up in the crowd. 100% safe for the spectators, however all they'd be able to see is a block of concrete.

[Bevan-L]

I'm deeply distressed after watching that video

[Axeman444]

Originally Posted by davyboy

That wording's an advisory and is legally unenforceable in most jurisdictions.

except Australia...

Originally Posted by davyboy

To prevent cars getting into spectator enclosures you need the type of fencing they use on the super speedways in the US.

i'm no engineer, and maybe the Astrophysicists on here can correct me if wrong, but i think you would find that fencing works when cars are impacting along the fence, not directly into it

[NewsStalker]

Originally Posted by STEALTHY

Not sure how much you know about concrete, but if its 100 feet high and encasing the whole track, there is 0% chance of a car ending up in the crowd. 100% safe for the spectators, however all they'd be able to see is a block of concrete.

OK - I'll grant you this - providing, of course, that you never get two drivers named Barnes Wallis or Guy Gibson as drivers. If you do, then all bets are off

[NewsStalker]

Originally Posted by Axeman444

except Australia...

And think you will find not even in Australia. The problem is that nobody has managed to get a court ruling on it - the venues always manage to settle out of court usually with 'confidentiality clauses' as part of the settlement.

[redesp]

Originally Posted by Pro Racer

well it would be 1 in a million that the car went in like that and hence got flung into the crowd.

motorsport is dangerous not only for the driver's and teams but as this case proves spectators in some cases and we are lucky that injuries were only to a few and nothing worse.

There's been several instances od repeated "one in a million" crashes though.
Will Power (i think) over the wall and Calder... then followed by lowndes the next day..
There was that Porche that Tripped at the ripple strip at QR a couple of years ago.. then followed by Jason Richards (with some help from paul morris).

As for the spectators getting hit.... well I bet they sat in that pariticular spot in the hope that a car would plough off into the dirt and/ or barrier in front of them... that's how I pick my seat at any track.. gotta maximise the opportunity to see a good "off"
Those guys definatly got good value for money..

[Bevan-L]

Originally Posted by redesp

There's been several instances od repeated "one in a million" crashes though.
Will Power (i think) over the wall and Calder... then followed by lowndes the next day..
There was that Porche that Tripped at the ripple strip at QR a couple of years ago.. then followed by Jason Richards (with some help from paul morris).

As for the spectators getting hit.... well I bet they sat in that pariticular spot in the hope that a car would plough off into the dirt and/ or barrier in front of them... that's how I pick my seat at any track.. gotta maximise the opportunity to see a good "off"
Those guys definatly got good value for money..

Calder isnt exactly "safe" to begin with.... even when it was used in the 90's... Theres been a few big ones coming into T1 there.

[fomoco]

There will be a lot of conjecture about this incident. I was there. I wont go into all the details, suffice to say, the reports were handed to race control, footage, and investigation, they will decide what is required to avoid this again. Also, another mini twice left the track and struck the barrier at turn six on friday and agian on sunday. So, with the reports, footage, mechanical inspection of the cars, they should come up with an appropiate resulution.

The best news is the two spectators who received injuries are ok, physically,but , Like the rest of us there, it still in our heads.

[PVDA]

Originally Posted by redesp

Will Power (i think) over the wall and Calder... then followed by lowndes the next day..

Justin Cotter actually.

Originally Posted by Axeman444

i'm no engineer, and maybe the Astrophysicists on here can correct me if wrong, but i think you would find that fencing works when cars are impacting along the fence, not directly into it

The fence in question was made from chain mesh so is only designed to stop people not cars.

To get to the fence the car had to get through a large gravel trap and past the concrete wall.

[GTRMagic]

Originally Posted by glenn_a

Could it be a problem with the mini's? We have seen two serious accidents in two days. Over the years we have also seen Justin Hemes roll one at Oran Park (2008?) Then we saw Chris Alajajian roll his at Sandown (2009?).

Plus Chris Wootton at the Grand Prix, plus that one at Indy where the driver had to be cut from the wreck, plus the crash earlier in the weekend that wrecked a car.

I find it odd that there are sooo many of them being wrecked. Inexperience in any race car, let alone Minis may also be a contributor!

[fomoco]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

Plus Chris Wootton at the Grand Prix, plus that one at Indy where the driver had to be cut from the wreck, plus the crash earlier in the weekend that wrecked a car.

I find it odd that there are sooo many of them being wrecked. Inexperience in any race car, let alone Minis may also be a contributor!

There seems to be problem with a system on these vehicles. Aside from the roll over QR , the other incidents mentioned point to something else.
The ABS system may be a contibuting factor.

[Rachel Richards]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

Plus Chris Wootton at the Grand Prix, plus that one at Indy where the driver had to be cut from the wreck, plus the crash earlier in the weekend that wrecked a car.

I find it odd that there are sooo many of them being wrecked. Inexperience in any race car, let alone Minis may also be a contributor!

Thanks for those comments GTR, finally we might actually be looking at some real reasoning.....

[Average Punter]

And Jason Akermanis at Symmons.

Like a customer said to me at work this morning. "They roll over as easy as a tennis ball..."

[Axeman444]

Originally Posted by PVDA

The fence in question was made from chain mesh so is only designed to stop people not cars.

To get to the fence the car had to get through a large gravel trap and past the concrete wall.

sorry PVDA i meant the type of fencing in the states that i was quoting someone else mentioning. wasn't referring to the QR fence

[grelley]

I am staggered to see the extremely poor quality fencing that they are able to get away with, and even more so when you consider they are running V8 S/cars on the same track. That fencing would not be allowable on a track in New Zealand. The organisers are very lucky with the limited amount of injurys (as are the spectators).

[NewsStalker]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

Plus Chris Wootton at the Grand Prix, plus that one at Indy where the driver had to be cut from the wreck, plus the crash earlier in the weekend that wrecked a car.

I find it odd that there are sooo many of them being wrecked. Inexperience in any race car, let alone Minis may also be a contributor!

Talk about trying to sensationalise this! You should know better.

How many race meetings and races have occurred, how many competitors and how many incidents of this type?

Tell you what - lets define a period and say, in the last 10 yeras?

If this was happening at every race meeting every weekend, then yes, maybe it IS a cause for real concern, but they are effeetively 'one in a million' happenings (and remember, this phrase, one in a million, was never meant to be taken literally - it simply refers to sopmething that does NOT happen often and is out of the ordinary and usually CANNOT be predicted.

Tell you what, lets get all the drivers, spectators and officials to wear nappies - because with statements like this, it is how some are trying to treat them!

(And no - I am not saying this accident (for that is what is was) was bound to happen or even planned).

[GTRMagic]

One in a million that happened 3 times across the weekend? And several times more in the past season and a half?

Hmmm, time for someone to help me to pick my Lotto numbers, the chances of winning are far more attainable

[PVDA]

Originally Posted by grelley

I am staggered to see the extremely poor quality fencing that they are able to get away with, and even more so when you consider they are running V8 S/cars on the same track. That fencing would not be allowable on a track in New Zealand. The organisers are very lucky with the limited amount of injurys (as are the spectators).

I bet you'll find plenty of tracks in NZ with exactly the same type of fences to keep the spectators at bay.

You've all got to remember that the fence the car went over is not designed to stop a car, the gravel trap & concrete wall has that job.

Chances area V8 being bigger & heavier than a Mini wouldn't go quite as far in a similar rollover crash.

[NewsStalker]

Originally Posted by GTRMagic

One in a million that happened 3 times across the weekend? And several times more in the past season and a half?

Hmmm, time for someone to help me to pick my Lotto numbers, the chances of winning are far more attainable

3 cars went into the crowd over the same weekend? Someone in the newsrooms obviously didn;t want this informaiton to get out.

So why wasn't racing banned 3-4 years ago when 2 cars upended themselves on the same corner on the same day?

Oh hang on - 4 people sneezed at the event - it's a major flu outbreak!

[Malfunction Junction]

Some years ago Markus Winkelhock, not a hack by any description, managed to roll one of these things over on the Nordschleife, IIRC without the assistance of any other driver.


As for those who don't want a physics lesson, look away now, even though I'm going to resist facepalming at the arguments in favour of acceleration while upside down or on wet grass.

Numerous racing cars perform poorly while travelling across an irregular surface. Even those designed for irregular surfaces (rally, speedway etc) often don't remain in contact with that surface when rolling dynamically (while in motion). We wouldn't need roll cages otherwise.

It is conceivable that a car travelling across, say, a gravel trap may be elevated above it's normal distance from the surface. Placing a compressible obstacle across the projected path requires consideration of whether the vehicle may adopt a trajectory as a result.

In other words, if a car's rolling over the sand trap, it's centre of gravity is going to be higher so it's going to be easier for it to be flipped over the tyres into the fence/crowd. Add rows of tyres to approx 1.5 times the height of the vehicle while stationary and you should be able to manage even rollovers.

That said, the circumstances prevailing here are exceptional, the sunday accident at the same spot being much more representative, but now that it's happened, it needs to be addressed.

This will probably require a bit of earthworks to elevate the spectator area, but it's not too bad.

On the same topic, it still amazes me to see how poorly protected some marshalling points are, but that's another thread....

[mountainstar]

I rarely watch TV but did turn on Fox News here in the USA this morning and it was a feature story at the top of the show. So you made the headlines over here.

This past week at work, one of the students with an instructor on board put a car wheels up. It was a combination of factors from mistakes the driver made, the road itself and possibly what the instructor could have done to correct it. It all happened at a very low speed but a combination of all the above put the car tits up.

There is some idiot proofing we will have to do to prevent the same happening again, but people have to understand when you have metric ton blobs of metal going around at speed there will always be a risk either to the driver or the spectators and marshals(if there are any). I've been to most circuits in Australia and NZ, plus many in the UK and the USA. This Mini accident could have happened at most of those tracks, including just about all of them in OZ and NZ.

[Woolley]

Full spec safety fences will stop a car, different grades according to risk. There are fences that will stop a NASCAR at 380k and there are fences that will stop a chicken, you take your choice. The bigger and stronger, the better they work and the worse the view. Then you decide how high you need it. Kelvin Burt at Thruxton, Keith Odor at Donington and someone in a Porsche at Pukekohe all showed that fairly high may still not be enough.

You can't predict everything, you can't stop everything, you can only mitigate the risk.

[NewsStalker]

Woolley - the point was made earlier though that all catch fences are primarily designed to stop a racing car when hit at an oblique angle.

In this case, the fencing was hit at 90 degrees ie square on to it.

I'm not an enginerr, but I don't think you would find even 'full spec safety fence' is designed to stop a vehicle hitting it straight and will stop a car - even a Mini.

As has also been said - it IS a one in a million - you can't realistically build a track for every inconceivable type of accident (by its own defintion, if it is 'inconceivable' you can't possibly know about it!)

[STEALTHY]

Originally Posted by NewsStalker

Woolley - the point was made earlier though that all catch fences are primarily designed to stop a racing car when hit at an oblique angle.

In this case, the fencing was hit at 90 degrees ie square on to it.

I'm not an enginerr, but I don't think you would find even 'full spec safety fence' is designed to stop a vehicle hitting it straight and will stop a car - even a Mini.

As has also been said - it IS a one in a million - you can't realistically build a track for every inconceivable type of accident (by its own defintion, if it is 'inconceivable' you can't possibly know about it!)

To overcome the 90 degree thing, the fence could be staggered on a slight angle. But the whole idea of this circuit is so that people can see the whole track from every point, fences like that would just ruin it (like they do almost every other track)

[PVDA]

I'll just repeat what I said earlier in this very thread.

Originally Posted by PVDA

You've all got to remember that the fence the car went over is not designed to stop a car, the gravel trap & concrete wall has that job.

A proper catch fence designed for the job would've stopped the car from entering the spectator area but under the criteria for track design you'll probably find the distance from the track and speeds involved wouldn't require a catch fence there.

As for the attack angle of the car into the fence you've only got to look at speedway, where vehicles like Sprintcars have near enough to head on collisions with catch fences as they get upended going into the corners, to know you can engineer a fence to stop almost anything.