Will Power Crash/Concussion

[Jolle]

...5cm of a soft material and then 10 cm of dense material?

They're already made from foam.

http://s10.postimg.org/687hp3nu1/cockpi ... 00x349.jpg

...the neck isn't able to act as a flexible low speed impact cushion...

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).

There is a difference, the neck must be immobilized between head and body as much as possible, but the deceleration on the head must be as slow as possible. If everything is immobilized, hitting the wall sideways, at relative slow speeds, before the crash structures begin to "work", it's like hitting a wall with your bare head without protection.

The "U" has foam indeed, but I suspect this is made for a high speed impact, just like a helmet. It's the differences you feel with a motorcycle helmet and a yellow safety helmet.

[bdr529]

The "U" has foam indeed, but I suspect this is made for a high speed impact, just like a helmet. It's the differences you feel with a motorcycle helmet and a yellow safety helmet.

Care to elaborate a little on "the differences you feel".
I wear a hard hat all day at work, and ride a motorcycle also, and don't really understand what you mean by this

[Tim.Wright]

I think there would have been quite a large initial spike of acceleration because he hit a concrete wall with the suspension, which is not only not a crash zone but is designed to be as stiff as possible which is the opposite of what you want in an energy absorbing structure.

It is what I initially thought happened in the Alonso accident before it all turned wierd and it became obvious that something was being covered up. It's a characteristic of modern open wheelers that their side impact absorbing zones are inside the track with. So if you hit a wall side on the initial spike off acceleration will be huge until the suspension fails and lets the side impact zones come into play.

[Jolle]

The "U" has foam indeed, but I suspect this is made for a high speed impact, just like a helmet. It's the differences you feel with a motorcycle helmet and a yellow safety helmet.

Care to elaborate a little on "the differences you feel".
I wear a hard hat all day at work, and ride a motorcycle also, and don't really understand what you mean by this

just bump your head on a ceiling beam with your motorcycle helmet, it hurts, with a hard hat (the ones with the plastic suspension inside), you just feel the "tock"

[bdr529]

The "U" has foam indeed, but I suspect this is made for a high speed impact, just like a helmet. It's the differences you feel with a motorcycle helmet and a yellow safety helmet.

Care to elaborate a little on "the differences you feel".
I wear a hard hat all day at work, and ride a motorcycle also, and don't really understand what you mean by this

just bump your head on a ceiling beam with your motorcycle helmet, it hurts, with a hard hat (the ones with the plastic suspension inside), you just feel the "tock"

I've hit my head on enough beams, had tools, and lumber fall on me and have crashed a few times on the bike,
I can say for certain, I would've rather have been wearing the motorcycle helmet instead of the hard hat on a couple of those occasions.

[countersteer]

Questions this is raising with me...
Is the brain more susceptible to injury from side deceleration/impact vs. front or rear?
Is the increased focus on preventing impacts to the head leading to cockpit sides that are too close and/or too hard?

Here's the Eric Medlin wikipedia page. Read the section about his death from an NHRA Funny Car incident when a tire failed and the resulting imbalance resulted in repeated side to side impacts on his head from the roll cage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Medlen

Finally, here's a story explaining how Will Power was initially misdiagnosed. He was already fighting an ear infection while a crew member had come down with a stomach virus. They put 2 and 2 together and initially decided this was his problem. Later, upon further evaluation, they determined that he had suffered a concussion.

http://www.racer.com/indycar/item/12712 ... -diagnosis

[mrluke]

Care to elaborate a little on "the differences you feel".
I wear a hard hat all day at work, and ride a motorcycle also, and don't really understand what you mean by this

just bump your head on a ceiling beam with your motorcycle helmet, it hurts, with a hard hat (the ones with the plastic suspension inside), you just feel the "tock"

I've hit my head on enough beams, had tools, and lumber fall on me and have crashed a few times on the bike,
I can say for certain, I would've rather have been wearing the motorcycle helmet instead of the hard hat on a couple of those occasions.

Im assuming the hard hat didnt help in the bike crashes?

[bdr529]

I've hit my head on enough beams, had tools, and lumber fall on me and have crashed a few times on the bike,
I can say for certain, I would've rather have been wearing the motorcycle helmet instead of the hard hat on a couple of those occasions.

Im assuming the hard hat didnt help in the bike crashes?

good one =D> =D>
I was always wear a motorcycle helmet and strap it on when riding the bike, even if it's just to go around the corner

I don't think the motorcycle/ hard hat is the best analogy for this, maybe a football or hockey helmet would be a better comparison to a motorcycle helmet in this case

[Tommy Cookers]

iirc the basis of crash helmets is that the threshold for lasting brain disruption is around 150g skull acceleration (deceleration)
ie helmet foam's yield strength is chosen to start yield at this accelerative load (and so the helmet is inactive at lower accelerations)

concussion presumably occurs at these lower accelerations
and construction-type protective helmets are active at these lower accelerations ?

these two requirements are mutually antagonistic
any lowering of the g threshold (to meet the Euro standard that newly and uniquely? limits the time duration near the 150g limit) .....
makes the helmet even bigger and heavier

the Snell Foundation said the Euro standard is scientifically bogus (and why)
it makes illegal in Europe helmets that are otherwise legal globally, so it smells like European protectionism

since 2 or even 3 different helmet sizes will have the same shell size the foam thickness is highly variable
so some sizes might allow survival in severe impacts where the rules allow (eg other sizes to give) a non-survival outcome

brain rotational acceleration and neck rotation are issues that rather escape the rulemakers
children are particularly vulnerable via the universal permissibility and popularity of cycle helmets with integral peaks
(on a similar basis motorcycle etc helmets only allowed non-rigid integral peaks and knock-off rigid peaks)

the pointless military aviation 'bonedomes' come from momentary airframe issues (that caused George Welch to wear his football helmet)
decades later the Lavi fighter was cancelled, in part as a USP was negated by pilot neck problems due to helmet weight
in my amateur way I predicted the Earnhardt type accidents
experts having said that crash helmets should have relatively less or much less shell (and more energy absorbtion constituents)

and today's hottest issue in the UK is 'shaken baby syndrome' (can shaking a baby kill it by inducing brain damage ?)
20 years ago the (UK) answer was 'yes', 10 years ago it was 'no', and now the naysaying ruling expert is deing debarred by non-experts

[bdr529]

As for both helmets, motorbike, hard hat. I'm mandated as to what I can wear by the governing body that over sees that regulation whether that's DOT, SNELL, ECE for the motorbike helmet, or the CSA in the case of a hard hat in Canada.
I maybe the safety officer at work but the only thing I have control over is that the worker has an up to date hard hat in good condition, and the electricians are wearing the one that they required to have. besides making sure that they are wearing them for various safety reasons, the regulations take care of the rest of it for me http://www.labour.gc.ca/eng/health_safe ... head.shtml

For the motorbike helmet I must make sure that it complies to the DOT, SNELL, ECE regulations in Canada,
http://www.motosport.com/blog/u-s-and-c ... aws#Canada
as for fit, I'm kind of anal about that, it must fit snug to my head with very little or no movement at all.
I have no problem replacing it when the padding wears out, or it becomes to old, that can be expensive, but having had a few crashes racing and knowing some one that received a brain injury in a crash 20 yrs ago
the guys 40 now and still has the mental capacity of a 5 year old, It's a very small price to pay in the long run

Other then wearing the right one at work and the best one I can afford for the bike,
I really don't give it much thought, besides I'v got enough safety related things going on at work like tower cranes,
concrete buckets and materials swing over head, people working in close proximity to heavy equipment,
among a litany of other job sit hazards that change from hour to hour.
Some gov't agency has taken care of the particulars for me, regarding helmets and I can't deviate from them

[countersteer]

And now we're back to this....

"The doctors at the University of Miami concluded Power's symptoms were not the result of a concussion, and may have been related to a lingering inner-ear infection for which he was being treated," said Dr Terry Trammell, safety consultant to IndyCr.
"There is no evidence that he sustained a concussion in the crash on Friday, which is consistent with his ear accelerometer data and the mandatory screening evaluation conducted after his crash."

http://www.racer.com/indycar/item/12718 ... -for-power

[Andres125sx]

I think we get surprised with these accidents (even when this particular case seems like there was no concussion) because nowadays we´re used to big accidents with no consequences



Thanks to tecpro barriers we see drivers scratch free after some serious impacts


So when we see one of this, or Alonso crash in Barcelona, it looks like too soft to cause any damage.


But there´s a huge difference, tecpro barriers do an awesome job absoving energy, while walls absorb no energy at all so all the energy from the impact goes directly to the cockpit/driver.

It´s not that those crashes are not that hard, but the other way around, we´re used to very hard crashes with no consequences thanks to tecpro barriers and their amazing ability to absorb energy while deforming, so when they hit a wall, even if the impact is small in comparison, there´s nothing absorbing energy so drivers suffer a much higher deceleration peak as Tommy Cookers explained, what causes concussions easily

[Pierce89]

http://www.autosport.com/news/report.ph ... -of-return

For whoever it was arguing with me when I said a concussion wasn't what kept Power from racing.