Safety Equipment....A Lesson Learned

Very true, everybody needs to remember that this was a VERY SAFELY BUILT car, & it CAN HAPPEN TO ANYBODY!!!


Mike G. While I do agree with you about learning from these accidents, Trust me, as the person that was running Bobb at the time of the accident, seeing it happen, and looking at the car(even under tarps) for over 600 miles while following Robin as she towed it to our house for storage until thier ready to deal with it. Its not something that should be taken lightly, the Family's requests should/will be honor'd, maybe in time, but not until Bobb is up & around, and he and Amy decide that they are ready. I'm sure you understand as I'm sure Cindy would expect the same courtesy.

 

You All Understand Now!

Hope you all understand, no matter what kind of mechanical failure you may have, your competetor may even cross the lanes or crash in to you.....BELIEVE ME.....the odds are not in your favor of going racing for ever without having a mishap. Doug thanks for starting this......i feel the same, i can say this because John Stevens and I tarped and secured Bobbs car for its journey......i still cant get the sight out of my mind....Bobb attention to detail and safety saved his life.

I personally will not race again untill my high 10 sec...Buick is equipped the same safety issues as a 9 sec car, along with the proper fire and helmet ware. And i will encourage everyone to take the time to make the frist pass at a new track all the way to the end, at a reasonable speed, find out where the sand pit is, and how the track is configured.

The reality is that Neither the IHRA, or the NHRA require us to build a car that is safe enough to go the speed that it is capable of, so the minimum standards will not be enough to save you in a rare accident like this one.

And even to ignore the minum safety standards can be deadly, think of your family, friends, and fellow racers...,...think...and........be safe.

 

I agree, but only after it's ok'd by the family.



I personally like full helmets over the "face sticking out" ones but I can see why people would like the other kind.

 

SAFETY IS A BIG ISSUE. talking to my son and carl about when i was a union safety rep at pratt and whitney and i'd carry the same practices to home. drove my kids nuts!! but, they are still in one piece.

when john works in the garage, by himself, he still adheres to what has to be done before working on any car.

we will be looking at the 'hawk we bought to see if any other protection is needed; i.e. more rollbars, kill switch, e-brakes, fire extinguisher, etc.

AND....when this car hits the track, it will be setup to go STRAIGHT with no wacky wheelies and wierd body twists that i see all the time. tell me those aren't hazardous.

hopefully. EVERYBODY will be doing safety assessments of their cars this winter.

how about we make a sticky check list for racing safety. this way it won't get lost in the system. i'd start it, but don't know how.

john

 

I can't count the numbers of cars that I have seen run down the track that were just plain unsafe.As mentioned before we all spend more and more money on going faster and less on safety.My friend wrecked his car at the nsca columbus race and thank god walked away but we built the car to be very safe sfi 25.5 spec.Some thing can be learned from these accidents we all need to watch our butts to hell with speed if it kills you.Some one in another post said the nhra sucks well they are just looking out for us.2005 brings all new roll cage rules from 9.99 down.SFI spec 25.1e-25.5 all pertain to cars from 8.50-6.0 depending on weight and et.Most of these rules where brought on for the fastest street car racing seen due to 3200lb cars going sub 7sec passes with a roll cage designed for 2300lb prostocks.
Then you had 10 inch tire cars going deep in the 7s with the bare minimum.The nhra isn't doing this to hurt us but rather save our butts.Atleast they are not trying to slow us down just telling us if you go this fast you need to and will have the proper equipment.For any car with a roll cage the nhra will require a tag on the cage from the chassis shop that installed the cage or chassis.Therefore if the car is wrecked and the cage failed they can contact the builder and solve the problem to prevent future incidents.These new rules will require alot of cars to be redone but if you are going this fast you just plain need to be legal. Now as a side note if your cage has a tag that is good past 2005 it will be under a grandfather clause and will be legal until the tag expires after then you need to have it updated.

 

What if you build it yourself? o No:

 

I'll have to check on that I know they are going to be strict on cage construction.I'll find out and let you know.

 

This thread is very timely for me. I am shopping for a helmet and I was considering an open face. Not anymore. A lesson learned. Thank you

 

That has me a bit confused. I would figure if NHRA doesn't like the cage they fail the car period. If they inspect it and it meets their high standards they certified the cage, then they would be taking on the lion share of liabilty as they sonic test it and do a visual on the welds. Plus the NHRA cannot dictate to an outside business on how they do their work and we all know there are some shoddy shops out there. I would rely more on the word of an NHRA cage inspection over a shop that installs the cage as the NHRA has more to lose. And on safety failures that already have occured NHRA usually inspects where the failure is and makes there own changes to the rules regardless on who makes or installed the saftey equipment. Most cases it is not the fault of the chassis guy or the tech guy, it's just the impact of the accident that they may see the need for additional bars etc. This unfortunately cannot be predicted until a failure occurs followed up with an inspection, then the rules may be amended.

Anyway if what you stated is in fact correct, what is the case of a cage being legal such as mine and being certified for past years passing three inspections, and the chassis builder who installed it is no longer in business. Do I then have to remove a perfectly legal and safe cage and have another chassis builder do a new one. And what if that one closes shop in two years. Anotherwords we would be removing perfectly good legal cages because the guys who installed it is not available, even though NHRA tech passes it as being a good cage. Seems pretty unlogical and a way to chase people away from the sport.

If you can, could you please lead me to where you got the info, I just searched on the NHRA site and could not find anything on this.

Thanks

 

The nhra will still be taging the cage I think the whole idea of the installer tag is just a tracking thing let them know who built it.I beleive the nhra wants the shop to keep lot listings of all the tubing used by the shop.This way like I said if there was a problem they could trace it back to the failure and pull all possible tubing or cars that may have a problem.This must also work under a grandfather clause car already tagged may get a pass.The main consern is to get these shoddy built cars off the tracks and make the shops building them change their ways.I can tell you there will be cages cut out of cars that had passed before in the 8.50 and under cars.I will talk to the guys building my car tomarrow and clairify things they are the ones that told me this after one of the last certifications they held.

I have seen cages that had tags and there was no way in hell it should have.

 

Thanks for further checking please keep us posted on this info. I would be the first one on line to rip mine out if there was any question to its ability to do its job. I would think regarding shoddy cages being certified would be a major concern with the NHRA getting proper inspectors. I know the times I had mine inspected they were checking all the welds doing a visual along with checking thickness, throughout the cage. Again the liabilty question would be a big one if an inspector who is representing NHRA deliberately lets a bad car slide for what ever reason. Not only NHRA but the inspector could find himself in a deep pile of poop both civilly and even criminally if the car had obvious mistakes in the cage.

Thanks

 

After reading all of this GOOD advise I will only race with a full face helmet. I would also like to think that some where on this board we could have a section that list safty rules. A very good check list before you go to the track,before you run, and after each run. I know from my little exprience that sometimes you have to say it doesn't feel right and load it up and go home. I am not saying this happened here at all, but I know how compition does you. On the cages I know Nascar uses a magnetic devise that tell them of the thickness of the tubing Does NHRA or IHRA do this?

 

Even still with a full face you could break your eye sockets or nose if you face planted the wheel or dash.

I think a full face with a football steel guard would be the safest way.

 

OK I got the scoop on the tags.The only cars that require a builder tag are the SFI spec cars 8.50 and faster.The tag must have the shops name and a serial # for the chassis.Now the nhra is talking about certifying all roll bars and roll cages starting in 2005 but this is not set in stone.More information will be available after the PRI show and pomona.Sorry about the mix up.