bhall II wrote:Incidentally, safety tends to demand as much immobilization as possible, because that sort of flexibility in a crash causes everything from whiplash to
basilar skull fractures (what killed Dale Earnhardt).
Immobilize what? It's my understanding that if you constrain the head more to reduce neck stress then you typically increase the accel forces on the brain. It's a tradeoff. Concussions are much better understood now than 20 years ago, but in practical terms what does that mean for head restraint? Constrain more, constrain less, different decel profile, what?
When the FIA came up with the dimensions and spec of the modern racecar U-collar (~20 years ago?), they considered both injury modes (head and neck) and tried to find reasonable compromise. The FIA deserves credit for bringing safety equipment testing and specification into the age of reasoned science. I think that statement is not too strong.
For many many years all racers (even in close-top cars) wore helmets with no neck brace, no HANS, and no u-collar device. This surely caused more injury from helmet mass overstressing necks than it saved from reducing blunt trauma to the head. Dale Earnhardt is apt example there. The helmets over the years were subjected to progressively more severe impact testing which logically increased their weight. SNELL et al, did not consider the neck stress at all.
Many years of very sincere and earnest safety suggestions does not necessarily mean those suggestions are correct. A rating by a non-profit safety organization such as SNELL does not mean the rated equipment actually net saves lives. My personal opinion is that most safety-focused people in racing advocate x, y, or z because-
1. They want to feel like they are helping/saving someone, or
2. They want to emphasize that their field of interest (racing) is dangerous, in order to obtain a risk-seeking image.
3. And yes, sometimes plain old profit motive is involved.
If I raced in an era without the modern safety devices (collars, HANS, u-collars, etc.), and I was racing a closed-cockpit car, then I think the safest approach would be no helmet, but pad the heck out of any nearby roll-cage tubes with firm foam to reduce blunt-force trauma from hitting them.
