Safety of car recovery (and trucks on circuits)

[bill shoe]

Maria de Villota got a head injury during a test session when her car ran into a helmet-height loading platform on a lorry that was parked in the driving area, specifically pits. I think all F1 teams have a more careful approach to test setup now.

Several years on, large pieces of heavy equipment, complete with stairs and steel sheet metal fenders at helmet height, are driven on the track on the outside of turns when drivers are still racing.

I think the long-term result of the Bianchi tragedy will be to either yellow-flag races for accidents (mandatory slow-down of some kind rather than flags for flags' sake), or to pad the perimeter of heavy-equipment in the same manner as the stationary walls and barriers of modern tracks.

If heavy equipment is out on track already then by definition there is evidence of increased crash risk in that area at that time. I think overall track safety would be improved at no cost if the miles of wall padding were reduced in thickness by 1% and these resources were use to pad the perimeter of heavy equipment that was allowed on track during the race.

My hindsight is brilliant, yes? It's frustrating that each tragedy in F1 only brings very narrow-focused reforms rather than larger improvement.

Anyone ever seen wall-type padding on heavy-equipment, either for racing or some other purpose?

[CBeck113]

Padding heavy equipment would be impractical - the vehicles would be even larger, harder to drive, and slower.

I think the easiest way to avoid an accident like this is to force a speed limit in sections where track crews are on the track, not just a little off the throttle, but maximum 150kph as an example.

Also, I wouldn't bring Maria's accident into the equasion - that was a private training session, and had nothing to do with a race situation.

[fenix4life]

The solution like used in Le Mans might be useful.
They introduced 60kph zones.
It looked a bit strange in the beginning but it worked.
The race was able to continue where as a safety car would sometime take too much time to deploy.

You could in theory introduce some extended zones which have limited speed. Eg 100 kph.
The zone would not just have to be a single corner. Maybe a zone of 2 or 3 corners allowing them to slow down.
But for the rest of the track still allowing full speed.

[johnsonwax]

Slow down under caution.

[siskue2005]

[SectorOne]

I´m with Fenix, let them run 60km/h or on the pit limiter in the specific zone, problem solved.

[ESPImperium]

I think sectors where yellow flags are shown, there will be a Le Mans style "code 60" ideals. However, those JCBs won't be allowed on the track in high speed areas, i think cranes will be mandatory.

Drivers will have now have to noticeably slow down, 150kph would be my recommendation for that whole sector, not just that marshall sector/400m of track. Id also have tracks have cranes with at minimum 60m arms to reach most crashes in certain areas of a track. A Dunlop exit/130R exit crane could easily recover both sides of the track if positioned in the right area. Im sure there are other tracks in a similar situation in some areas.

As for chassis, and aero regs, i think this years reduction by a third have gone a bit too far. Id like to see the nose be level with the front axle as my ideal height, but be a flat section from the nose to the B-B or ideally the A-A line. Give the aero guys something back, but for safeties sakes make the nose a more suitable height, the last 2 or 3 years its been too high, this year in my opinion its too low. As for the rear, id have either the rear wing return to 2008 width or have it 150mm wider each side but a re introduction of the beam wing, but with a 100mm aerodynamically neutral section in the middle of the beam wing each side of the crash structure, like the centre section of the front wing from 2009 onward.

The cars need more downforce, however aero needs to be controlled better, meaning teams can only introduce new Wings & Floors once every 4 races until the event immediately after the last European round each year.

F1 isn't broken in racing terms, its in rude health i think. However the rules around safety, cost and governance from FIA & FOM need looked at. Clearly the Safety rules are needing looked at in certain areas of chassis and track. Cost control needs implemented to have a healty sport with 12 well supported teams. The FIA & FOM need to be completely separate, FIA control the regs with no interference from FOM, FOM need to promote the sport in a more positive light with no interference from the FIA. However there are power brokers in the sport who have their heads in the clouds or in the sand depending on what view point they are coming from.

However, i have gone massively off topic and apologise. One thing is for sure, change will happen after this terrible and most unfortunate event.

[wesley123]

I haven't seen the accident live, but I have seen the pictures and have followed the story a bit. Pictures show the roll over hoop completely thorn off and other damage to the tub. If I'm correct Bianchi's car ploughed under the crane.

Whatever change you put to the cranes(which frankly enough is a unreasonable requirement), Bianchi's car would have ploughed under the crane. You could add child-proof safety padding, but the same thing would have happened. Covering the underside so cars cant get under it anymore make the cranes unable to access a variety of areas etc. etc.

A fixed speed in yellow flag zones wouldn't suffice in these conditions either, nor in any conditions whatsoever. A 150kph speed limit was named, but afaik that would be higher than the speeds in T7 in those conditions. Knowing this, this would require lower speeds, which bring other dangers with it. Do you think drivers will nicely slow down? No, I think they will slam on the brakes to lose as little time as possible, this puts everyone in danger.

I find it hard to say, but I don't think that Bianchi's crash could have been prevented. It is one of those crashes that require an immense amount of bad luck to happen.

[zonk]

[Edax]

I think overall track safety would be improved at no cost if the miles of wall padding were reduced in thickness by 1% and these resources were use to pad the perimeter of heavy equipment that was allowed on track during the race.

I think that would be the wrong way to go.

The way I see it. Bianchi was hurt by hitting the tractor. However near the tractor were 4 or 5 marshalls at work and they could have been hurt as well. Now you can pad the tractor all you want, but you need some walkers to accompany it, and you cannot protect them.

The problem is that a car skidded into a "secured" recovery site, and that should simply not happen. I think that should be the focus of the investigation; should they have waited longer, sent out a safety car, should the drivers pay better attention to yellow flags. Or maybe this was one of those freak events that you cannot prevent.

Anyway I think that padding also would do little in these kind of accidents. Problem in both cases is that the car submerged under a stationary object rendering all crash zone's (nose, side impact) utterly useless. In Maria's case the car was actually stopped by her helmet.

Some skirts would have probably deflected the car away. But still these accidents should not happen in the first place.

[SectorOne]

@Zonk They only work in one direction and the lift will move in all kinds of angles.
Also someone mentioned 150k, that´s waaay too high in a zone with extremely heavy and tall vehicles.

[johnsonwax]

Actually, the problem is that safety cars inevitably add pressure to get a pit stop in without losing a position, which is largely a function of where on the track you are when the safety comes out. If the point of a SC is to get everyone to slow down, then the pit opportunity destroys that. What they could do instead is not make it a race to the pits - take everyone's delta at the last cross of start/finish, give them 2 full laps to pit (SCs are never less than 2 laps and it takes at least 2 laps to form up the field) and if they pit take their time inside within the speed limit region. At the end of the 2nd lap calculate their new position based on the start/finish delta combined with the pit time and reorder the field before the SC leaves. Those are all discrete measurements, timing/scoring can easily calculate and order the field, as can the teams and broadcasters. This involves a new pit lane bogey time because it doesn't include the deceleration/navigation of pit entrance/acceleration back to speed, but then it also doesn't include the time it takes cars at speed to cover the distance from pit enter to exit, so everyone will have a different pit cost while under SC but it'll be relatively fixed for everyone.

With this rule, there's no rush to get back to pits - in fact there's an incentive to slow down to give the pit crew time to set up and to develop a pit strategy (pit or not, what tires, how to gap for teammates, etc). It eliminates a lot of the franticness of SC pits, but that's just another opportunity for accidents anyway.

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, yes. Of course.

The barriers shown by zonk are standard in temporary traffic control. Workers are trained to look for refuge behind them.

Actually, as I usually say, at traffic lights you can find peddlers, people with squeegies and... traffic engineers.

TTC is short for Temporary Traffic Control: workers are at risk, but YOU, the driver, are the one with more possibilities of an accident


You don't think about it until it happens but when you are counting traffic, controlling heavy machinery or simply working on a road, the risks of being run down, run over or back over (when people simply run into your truck without even braking) are gigantic.

Traffic control is super dangerous because you are trying for people to take a different route than the one they are taking every day. You are trying to go against their more entrenched habits. That's not easy to do.

When you are working with individuals like, for example, lawyers do, you tend to forgot the law of great numbers applied to people.

That is, you do not think that, if you're working at an intersection, where perhaps 40.000 people crosses per day, a fairly typical cross, whatever happens to you once in your life (that is, every 40.000 days), that very same thing will happen today to someone using that crossing.

However, the barriers shown cannot stop safely an F1 car in a frontal accident against a truck.

Using traffic cones is also out of the question, so you have to wonder if there is the chance to use lights or LEDs embedded in the track to define the classical zones (taper, buffer and traffic) that are so well analyzed and defined for road work.

This deviation measures several hundreds of meters for cars at normal speeds

[ScottB]

The issue seems to be that his car went partially / fully under the truck, so why not fit some sort of 'side skirts' to track vehicles so that cars can't fit underneath them if they slide off?

Secondly, given the conditions, with one car having already aquaplaned off at the corner, might it have been safer to simply leave it there? Another car sliding off was always a possibility, and it hitting the truck, or even a marshall, as a consequence of that. I remember a particularly wet Brazil race a few years back where there ended up being several cars slid off at the Senna S corner and they were just left there each time.

Obviously that's hindsight at play, but presumably an F1 car hitting a stationary F1 car is probably better than hitting a truck, or a marshall, so I wonder if that might change policy going forward.

[Richard]

Given that every recovery vehicle is accompanied by marshals on foot, the probability is that a marshal is more likely to get hit than the recovery vehicle.

IMHO It's better to remove the cause of the accident. Using the pit limiter to replicate le moons code 60 seems to be the best idea.

Regarding the cranes that reach across the track, they're called 'sky hooks' by structural engineers in the UK. Architects love them. I'm not sure who manufactures them in other countries.