Open or roofed cars.

[Dr. Austin]

[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by Morris 1100

The safety problems work both ways."

That is why changes have to be made carefully. Any time you monkey around with safety, you can create a potentially more dangerous scenerio. Of course you will always strive to improve safety, you just have to be careful that you don't open another can of worms while you are doing it.


"The driver killed in an Open car recently had the roll bar fail and I heard the driver was decapitated."

This is what I heard from people who were on the scene. I wonder if the reason the bar failed was because it dug into the supposedly "safe" gravel trap and was ripped off. Gravel traps certainly help in certain accidents, but the scenerio I just mentioned could be what I previously described as another can of worms. What works so well in one accident could be fatal in another.




" but the Porsche drivers killed in the 80's had head injuries from impacting the roll bars in front of them."

I have video of Bellof's accident and there was no way he could have survived the impact alone. Even if the car had stayed together, just him stopping so fast would have scrambled his brains. I don't mean that to be funny, but I believe that is an accurate description of what would have happened.

The car was destroyed as far back as the middle of the side window. Nothing could have saved him. Maybe in a modern carbon fibre monocoque with a HANS device, but even at that it was pretty awful.

Winklehock's accident seemed to have the same impact. The car was just as torn up.

And poor Gartner tore down a telegraph pole and oak tree after flattenening about 100 feet of three layer aarmco. The biggest peice left of the car was half of one door.

None of this is mean to be grisley. It is to illustrate that all three of these accidents were not survivable no matter what safety technology was used. Maybe in the future, but nothing we have even today would have helped them. Even with indestructable chassis and head restraints, when the human body stops so fast, the organs inside continue to travel, thus damaging them. The inside of the cranium is pretty jagged, and the brain can tear very easily when it brushes up against it. When you consider that a perfect impact of only 12mph (15 with a helmet) can kill a human being (Bill simpson's figures), you can see that certain impacts are sadly not possible to survive even with forseeable improvements. The answer is in stronger cars, certainly, but more progress will occur when the work turns to softening the blow.

At least with coupes and head restraints I believe we can avoid more incidents like last weekend. The fact that head restraints aren't required in all forms of motorsports is a genuine travesty.




"I think the roof is the way to go but put in a Minimum width windscreen (More like a GT40 and not a Porsche 956 so the pillars and bars are away from the drivers head."

Agreed, but i think a head restraint is going to be necessary or we are going to have more bad days ahead of us.

[paulzinho]

Originally posted by Morris 1100
[B]....and not a Porsche 956....B]

More to the point of what the Doc's said. Bellofs car folded up on him, even if he hadn't succumbeed to head injuries I'd be surprised if hadn't damaged his body enough so as to survive. He hit armco head on at 180ish mph, how on earth can you survive that? No matter what the car.

Manfred Winckelhocks accident as far as im aware was another head on impact, this time with a concrete wall, which aint gonna budge.

Jo Gartner, now this one I'm not sure what exactly happenned. The review that ive seen of that race says he left the track on the Mulsanne (must have been at least 200 mph, more likely 220-230). Now I don't know why he left the track but the pictures of littered bodywork were quite frankly horrifying.

[cybersdorf]

Originally posted by paulzinho
Jo Gartner, now this one I'm not sure what exactly happenned. The review that ive seen of that race says he left the track on the Mulsanne (must have been at least 200 mph, more likely 220-230). Now I don't know why he left the track but the pictures of littered bodywork were quite frankly horrifying.

From what I recall, the 962 suffered a suspension collapse at Vmax on Mulsanne - Kremer Bros. had allegedly tinkered with the car in a way that the factory was very unhappy about - and basically snapped to one side of the track (can't remember which), detonated into the armco, became airborne on impact, and hit all sorts of solid objects (trees, sign posts, I don't know). Jo was killed instantly. I believe that's the way it happened although of course I wasn't there - I woke up to the news at 8 a.m. on Sunday...
I have never seen any pictures of the crash itself, or the aftermath - the local press, which usually likes to run in-depth reports about auto racing "blood-baths", refrained from using any such material at all in Jo's case. I still have the articles that were published in the days and weeks after his death; there are no "on-site" pictures anywhere. It must have been really bad.
Roof or no roof, Jo was basically dead the moment he lost control of that car.



off topic now - feel free to edit: as you can tell, I was a fan of Jo's so this still means something to me - I came across a "for sale" ad for his old F2 car today: http://www.fantasyjunction.com/searc...n.com:si:FJ476

[Dr. Austin]

In Ken well's book 'the jaguar challenge," some said he was leaking alot of oil, some of which Jochen Mass went off on in the Porsche curves. There were some opinions that the gearbox ran out of oil and siezed, causing the accident. we probably will never know.

PS Glad to see you back, cybers. Check out some of my modelling thread you might have missed. I've got one coming up with a car I have no clue about, so maybe you can identify it. It's a wierd one.

[cybersdorf]

Originally posted by Dr. Austin
The car was destroyed as far back as the middle of the side window. Nothing could have saved him. Maybe in a modern carbon fibre monocoque with a HANS device, but even at that it was pretty awful.

not even then, probably. Where would all the energy from the impact have gone? As you say - Winkelhock, Bellof, Gartner, Alboreto - these crashes were probably not surviveable. The J. Clinton crash seems to me to have been a bit of a "freak accident"; he may have survived IF. Not that it makes a difference now, at least not for the poor man himself and his family.

Protective gear á la HANS should become as common as the helmet, balaclava, and gloves. I think this is in the process of happening.

This is not the kind of Memory Lane I enjoy strolling down, I have to say...

[choked_wasp]

Originally posted by cybersdorf off topic now - feel free to edit: as you can tell, I was a fan of Jo's so this still means something to me - I came across a "for sale" ad for his old F2 car today: http://www.fantasyjunction.com/searc...n.com:si:FJ476[/i] [/B]

Whoo-Hoo, the more advertising the better Cybers. Still working on them for the Nurnburgring race .

Like I said at the DSC forums, they also have Jo's 962 that was flipped. Yes, it is in working condition.

Jeff

[cybersdorf]

Originally posted by choked_wasp
Like I said at the DSC forums

Whoo-Hoo, the more advertising the better!

they also have Jo's 962 that was flipped. Yes, it is in working condition.

Amazing.