Would a covered cockpit have helped Bianchi ?

[WaikeCU]

You can´t use currently written rules and use them to prove that canopies would be illegal in the future..
That´s like taking the 2013 regulations and claiming all 2014 cars are illegal.

I think the point most of all was that a driver needs to get very fast out of the car. 5 seconds might not be doable anymore, though we need to consider too if a driver really needs to able to get out of the car within 5s and not 7-8s

yes, that's what I meant...

I believe the 5-seconds rule is also a standard to declare if a driver is fit enough to get in the car.

[siskue2005]

You can´t use currently written rules and use them to prove that canopies would be illegal in the future..
That´s like taking the 2013 regulations and claiming all 2014 cars are illegal.

I think the point most of all was that a driver needs to get very fast out of the car. 5 seconds might not be doable anymore, though we need to consider too if a driver really needs to able to get out of the car within 5s and not 7-8s

Everyone should watch the video below it is brilliant effort from scarbs

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-vMPb5rkZM[/youtube]

[Richard]

With thanks to Strad - Covered cockpits aren't new in F1:

67 Monza practice

[Just_a_fan]

The FIA's accident review panel says that nothing could have helped protect Bianchi in this accident:

It is not feasible to mitigate the injuries Bianchi suffered by either enclosing the driver’s cockpit, or fitting skirts to the crane. Neither approach is practical due to the very large forces involved in the accident between a 700kg car striking a 6500kg crane at a speed of 126kph. There is simply insufficient impact structure on a F1 car to absorb the energy of such an impact without either destroying the driver’s survival cell, or generating non-survivable decelerations.

It is considered fundamentally wrong to try and make an impact between a racing car and a large and heavy vehicle survivable. It is imperative to prevent a car ever hitting the crane and/or the marshals working near it.

source:http://www.fia.com/news/accident-panel

[langwadt]

The FIA's accident review panel says that nothing could have helped protect Bianchi in this accident:

It is not feasible to mitigate the injuries Bianchi suffered by either enclosing the driver’s cockpit, or fitting skirts to the crane. Neither approach is practical due to the very large forces involved in the accident between a 700kg car striking a 6500kg crane at a speed of 126kph. There is simply insufficient impact structure on a F1 car to absorb the energy of such an impact without either destroying the driver’s survival cell, or generating non-survivable decelerations.

It is considered fundamentally wrong to try and make an impact between a racing car and a large and heavy vehicle survivable. It is imperative to prevent a car ever hitting the crane and/or the marshals working near it.

source:http://www.fia.com/news/accident-panel

common sense really, treat the disease not the symptoms.

if left up to the driver yellow flags are just an opportunity to gain and advantage by slowing less than the guy in
front or behind

[Andres125sx]

It is not feasible to mitigate the injuries Bianchi suffered by either enclosing the driver’s cockpit, or fitting skirts to the crane. Neither approach is practical due to the very large forces involved in the accident between a 700kg car striking a 6500kg crane at a speed of 126kph...

Disagree

Decelerations depend on the crash... specially on the angle with the object. The car got trapped under the crane producing an almost instant deceleration, with skirts the car could have bounced against the crane instead of getting trapped under it, and that would have produced much lower decelerations. That could have saved Jules


Even so I agree there are more problems to solve, but fair enough, skirts would have made a difference

[Just_a_fan]

With due respect, I suggest you're wrong and the panel have a better grasp of the details of this accident than anyone here.

For example, bouncing doesn't necessarily lead to a reduced acceleration and thus doesn't necessarily lead to less injury.

[GitanesBlondes]

It is not feasible to mitigate the injuries Bianchi suffered by either enclosing the driver’s cockpit, or fitting skirts to the crane. Neither approach is practical due to the very large forces involved in the accident between a 700kg car striking a 6500kg crane at a speed of 126kph...

Disagree

Decelerations depend on the crash... specially on the angle with the object. The car got trapped under the crane producing an almost instant deceleration, with skirts the car could have bounced against the crane instead of getting trapped under it, and that would have produced much lower decelerations. That could have saved Jules


Even so I agree there are more problems to solve, but fair enough, skirts would have made a difference

No the skirts would not have made any difference.

It's natural to want to believe that, but the only thing that MAY have prevented this accident from unfolding the way it did is if he had been going slower.

[Ciro Pabón]

What happened with the technical part of the name of this forum?

The weight of the crane or the weight of the car is irrelevant.

For example, I fell a few days ago against the Earth.

Can you believe that the Earth weighs approximately 6.000 trillions tons?

Lemme explain something: I survived.

Whew!


On the other hand I hit a 2.5 milligrams mosquito with a 20 grams newspaper at 10 kph yesterday.

The poor beast died


I suspect there is more than the weight of the things when you talk about a crash!

I wonder if someone here has ever analyzed an accident...

My bet: no.

I also notice that someone claims that you have to believe authorities.

In engineering? Are you mad?

[Andres125sx]

With due respect, I suggest you're wrong and the panel have a better grasp of the details of this accident than anyone here.

For example, bouncing doesn't necessarily lead to a reduced acceleration and thus doesn't necessarily lead to less injury.

Are we talking about generalities, or are we talking about Jules accident?

Jules crashed with an angle to the crane, with skirts his car wouldn´t have been trapped inside the crane, so deceleration would have been way lower.

Did you look at the counterweight of the crane? It has the perfect shape to trap a F1 car between that heavy and hard counterweight steel plate and the ground, and that´s the worst possible scenario for a crash

If he´d have crashed with a 90º angle skirts would have made no difference, but it´s not the case we´re talking about, so since the angle was much lower, if the car could have continued moving forward after crashing with the crane, decelerations would have been drastically reduced, as Jules injuries

[Andres125sx]

I also notice that someone claims that you have to believe authorities.

In engineering? Are you mad?

+1

[lebesset]

should I believe anyone who tells me that bianchi's car was trapped under the tractor ?
as the car slid past the tractor being stopped by it's roll bar being ripped off as it passed I am loth to do so !

incidentally it is reveal in the report that when bianchi lost control of the rear of the car he applied both accelerator and brake together ; that , on a wet track especially , seems counter intuitive to me ; it seems from the report that there is a device to stop the driver doing this but it didn't work ...but I don't understand how this device is designed as there is a long standing method of drivers blending brake and accelerator on corners , OK maybe that doesn't apply with these latest cars but it doesn't sound as though it is a recent introduction so how can B&A work with it in operation ? clearly I am missing something but what ?

[FW17]

For example, bouncing doesn't necessarily lead to a reduced acceleration and thus doesn't necessarily lead to less injury.

What do you mean?

[turbof1]

If there were skirts, the side impact crash structure would be the first part of the car that made contact with the crane. Since it is designed to desipate the energy, and assumingly the skirts would be designed for the same purpose, it would have made the crash less deadly.

However, I agree: trying to make such crashes survivable is practically undoable. The safest option is to avoid the crash altogether.

@Ciro: I think we came to the classic pshyics error: weight is not the same as mass. Weight is a force, mass times gravity. If I hit an object in space without any other force, like gravity, working on it, it'll bounce of me as much as I bounce of it. At earth gravity will change that pattern.

[Richard]

I suppose a skirt would mean the impact would be taken by the impact structure on the car which would reduce the risk to the driver. I guess one could imagine cladding them with those Tecpro modules but the resulting limited ground clearance would mean they would only be able to access hard run off zones. Also those tractor units do have a decent amount of suspension travel when lifting a car so what sort of gap would be needed under the skirt?

Anyway, its the marshals who are regularly killed at tracks, not drivers. Should they wear Tecpro skirts too? However they're not paid and we don't see their photo shopped smiling faces in the press so there's no outcry when they're killed. It sums up the difficulty of public health, the science looks at the population and focuses on saving the most lives, but the fallible humans get hooked on individual emotional stories.

The skirt thing would be nice if it could work but it mustn't be a distraction from the root cause. Thankfully the report does focus on the key issues:- Cars going too fast when there is a hazard, water running on track, better fail safe ECU on the car.