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Shouldn't all new convertibles have taller roll bars for real safety?
Remember that unlike road cars modern F1s have tight fitting seat harnesses and even they require the roll over line to be set at least 70mm over the driver's head. http://www.formula1-dictionary.net/roll_structure.html
Road cars usually don't have racing harnesses so standard 3 point seatbelts would go quite loose when rolling over thus badly scratching or compressing the driver and passenger heads with the pavement in a rollover.
g-force_addict wrote:Shouldn't all new convertibles have taller roll bars for real safety?
Yes!!
The only reason they don´t do it must be considering the windshield as the second roll structure.... they must be kidding, a tilted structure with no vertical support will never handle any serious impact.
Even Mercedes crash test show it, the side that receives the impact collapse almost completely, imagine where should have been passenger´s head, they didn´t put a dummy inside because it would be too obvious, convertibles are extremely dangerous in case of an overturn
“To be able to actually make something is awfully nice”
Bruce McLaren on building his first McLaren racecars, 1970
“I've got to be careful what I say, but possibly to probably Juan would have had a bigger go”
Sir Frank Williams after the 2003 Canadian GP, where Ralf hesitated to pass brother M. Schumacher
Yes motorbikes are more dangerous, but they don´t sell you the idea you´re plenty safe with it like they do with convertibles. The worst part to me is it could be solved quite easily, but they don´t do it because of aesthetic reasons. Put a vertical pillar on the windshield and it´s solved. If you don´t like the idea because it would be ugly, spend some more money on a better structure, but there are many solutions to improve safety by a good factor, so no excuse
This could be a good discussion about how safety could be increased on convertibles, with higher pop-up roll bars, with better windshield structures... maybe with two more pop-up roll bars in front of the windshield....
Ed Hilary on being 1st to top Mt Everest,
(& 1st to do a surface traverse across Antarctica,
in good Kiwi style - riding a Massey Ferguson farm
tractor - with a few extemporised mod's to hack the task).
I don't mean to discredit this thread at all. People like to do stupid things and it's hard to stop them. Assuming that we can't stop them, the best thing to do is to help people do these things safely.
F1 is a great example of this. No sane person in the 1960s would have ever got behind the wheel of an F1 car for fear of death. instead of pointing and laughing at the drivers, regulations were tightened up to make racing safer.
Similarly, convertibles aren't going away. But that doesn't mean we can't make them safer (as long as people really do hit their heads while rolling over in convertibles)
Important to note that an upside down f1 car actually sits at an angle so you need to make sure the single impact structure is tall enough to prevent the drivers head moving in an arc which hits the road.
Whereas a convertible will quite happily sit fully upside down and as long as the roll bar is higher than the drivers head there is very little chance of head to ground action.
Having been in an couple of accidents myself (and some in karts), I don't see much difference between your head hitting the car roof or hitting the road.
I don't know how many of you have been in a rollover. My gravest accident (I wasn't driving, btw, and not racing at all) was when I was 18, in a remote road in Ecuador and it was a rollover.
I (and I am not making this up) broke a window with my head, scratched my face against the pavement and saw the car's roof hitting the road several times inches away from my head while turning, because my freaking head was hanging around like a grape in a storm, outside the freaking window, while the freaking car turned and turned for like twenty minutes.
The scars in my face, that still remain, somehow taint my natural beauty and grace,as you can see in the image
Lemme tell that in a rollover the roof is actually a dangerous, crumpled, broken thing.
While i was turning, being hit successively by the door, the roof (or what was left of it), my uncle by my side, the floor and again, the door, I wasn't precisely thinking "jeez, I wish the roof were 12 inches taller".
¿Taller roof? Problem solved
I was actually surprised by the relative motion of things: you somehow believe you're going to move in unison with the car, rolling with it: definitely, emphatically, you're not.
This is an static rollover, it starts at the 0:40 seconds mark, notice the dummies move against the car
It's the car the thing that kills you, not the road.
Part of F1 success in diminished mortality (the current diminishing rate stands at infinity percent, because you have to divide by zero) is the fact that grave accidents (rollovers, impacts against fixed objects, engulfing fires) are inexistent these days. You cannot reach that infinity rate through better roofs, chassis or extinguishers...
In short, mortal accidents are dangerous...
Seriously, less anecdotally, I can tell you, in my professional voice (I work in that) that the best measures against deaths in cars is changing the road.
It's the road, stupid: I believe one foot of roof is not good enough in a rollover in this road
When you:
change the sides of the road eliminating fall offs or impacts against fixed objects
change the famous "'devil's curve" (there is one in every road), that is, have no changes in alignment that forces you to change speed more than 15% in respect to median speed
illuminate cross roads in rural environments
then you avoid mortal accidents.
That's the best single measure you can take against deaths in cars.
The next best thing you can do is to change driver attitudes.
The safest thing to do is change gender. If you cannot, change your age
Your best chance to survive a road accident (which, btw, unless you're a pedestrian or a cyclist, are much more dangerous than city accidents) is by crashing in a closed circuit, where you go to race (and crash) on weekends, not in your local road network, speeding with your friends, ehem.
In short, experience and less testosterone are better than rollbars.
So, let older, female people drive, you'll be much safer. Your mom drives better than you.
Emma, whatever you say, you can drive, what the heck, girl...
Ciro Pabón wrote:Having been in an couple of accidents myself (and some in karts), I don't see much difference between your head hitting the car roof or hitting the road.
But there´s a difference. If you would have crashed with a convertible, the road would have been much closer to your head, to the point that probably you could have not survived. Instead of being hitted by the roof, you could have been crushed by the road
The roof of a car is a much more rigid structure than the windshield of a convertible. This obviously does not mean a roof is bullet proof in case of a rollover, but much safer than a convertible, that´s a fact
More or less agree about the rest of your post, but safety must be improved at every aspect. Roads must be improved, agree, attitudes must be more civilised, agree, but that does not mean car safety must remain the same it is now.
If it can improve, it must improve
About the video of the dummies at the rollover hitting the car... that´s the point of inertia-reel seatbelts, isn´t it?
Helmet wearing has been made compulsory for bike riders in many countries on safety grounds..
Safety researchers know that applying this sanction to car drivers would also offer like benefits..
..however..
..all those 'safe' women drivers would promptly - vote out of office - any politician who forced 'helmet hair' on them..
"Well, we knocked the bastard off!"
Ed Hilary on being 1st to top Mt Everest,
(& 1st to do a surface traverse across Antarctica,
in good Kiwi style - riding a Massey Ferguson farm
tractor - with a few extemporised mod's to hack the task).
