Quote:
Originally Posted by S griffin
It's weird how often we've needed the halo since it's been introduced. I don't remember there being many similar incidents before it was introduced. Still it's saved plenty of lives, so you can't complain
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I agree with this, considering "accidents that would have been fatal without the halo" as a group we know exactly how frequent they were before the halo's introduction, it's just all the fatal accidents. If we accept that every accident since then where people have assessed that it would have been a fatality without the halo as being in that group then there has been a huge increase in such accidents since it was introduced.
I can think of three things that could explain this.
1. Other safety systems have been relaxed at the same time.
2. Drivers feel safer so they take more risks.
3. Some (not all before everybody shouts Romain Grosjean at me
) of the lives perceived as being saved by the halo actually would have somehow got away with it even without the halo.
There might be a little of all these but I think 3 is a major factor.
Having said all that there is no doubt it has saved lives and I think it is a really important safety improvement the sport sorely needed but I don't for one second think it has saved the number of drivers it is popularly said to have done and of course it isn't just about fatalities, it has probably prevented serious injuries too.
It would be interesting to see a real statistical analysis of this question but it is thirty years since my job included such things and these days I'd lean on others for it, now where's Schumi?