Track safety improvement ideas
 

All we need is a smart look at safety improvements.

After Blain Johnson died NHRA changed all nat. event tracks to a continuous guardrail. No open spots like the one he hit. I've been thinking abour Erics impact and wondering about calculating the forces that may allow some movement sideways, but not have an adverse affect when continuing moving downtrack.

K-rails can be allowed to move a slight amount. Slot them and set them on pins. If that rail could have moved six inches it may have lessend the impact. Something like that could work. Concrete guys? Anyone?

How about a spotter/scooter running down each lane after each run. That's easy to do. That person could see more than a couple of guys looking over the k-rail.

We've (again) gotten too comfortable with the way things are now.

We need sensible ideas.


"The less I race the crankier I get..."

Bruce,
Wasn't Eric's accident at a test session?
What does a test session have to do with safety issues on Race day?
I'm all for safety, but....

Adger Smith

I don't understand your confusion. A very fast car was getting ready to run. Doesn't matter if it's a test day or not. If there had been an accommodating guardrail if you will, maybe the side impact would have been lessened. I believe we'll see a design change in our lifetime.

Just looking for ideas. It is agreed we need improvements?

"The less I race the crankier I get..."

Considering the speeds and awesome acceleration I think drag racing has a surpring safety record.
When was the last time a fuel funny car driver died ?? Dickie Harrell ??
There are more sportsman drivers dying in accidents that not many people get excited about.It makes me sick that more isn't done at the sportsman level !!
Do you know what you would do if your throttle stuck ?? The track runs out real fast at 120-170 MPH !! Have a plan so it's REACTION not something you have to think about !! A few minutes sitting in your car going over various scenerios could save your life !
I apologize if I upset anyone........

I'm kinda surprised that someone hasn't mentioned the use of the safer wall barrier system that is used in other bodies of racing.

OK, Bruce Now I understand your first post. I didn't understand where you were going. You know you can & have gone some strange palces... :--)
I agree with improvements in the wall/barrier designs. As a first step they might want to close up the width of the track. That might help in preventing a "run" at the wall. Most of these concrete barriers are designed to keep cars in the lanes or roadways & roll them back into the lane if they climb up the barrier. I don't think they were designed for vehicles as low as F/C & Top Fuelers. After striking a traditional metal guard rail during a crash in '99 I'm not too fond of them. Esp. when they are quite a few feet off the track. That allowed my car to "square off" with the rail & make an almost head on hit instead of an angled impact. As most of you engineers know, that didn't do my body any good when all that energy in the car met an immovable object. I was lucky to survive, but with a "Soft Hit' I might not have sustained all the severe injuries. This might be a step forward where our insurance surcharge & oildown fines could be spent. What's the old saying? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. .

Adger Smith

That's a very good point. I can't say that a safer wall barrier would have saved Eric Medlen, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt. It would seem like it would be very easy to retrofit most dragstrips with the safer barrier, especially since they walls are all completely straight.

That said, I really feel like there's only so much you can do to protect the fuel class drivers. There's only so much punishment a human body can take, and I'm guessing that at 300 mph you're pushing those limits. Quite frankly, I'm surprised a modern-era funny car driver hasn't been killed by flying debris from an engine explosion (ala Darrell Russell from the tire).


Jason Oldfield
S/G & S/ST 1838

Adger,

Though you got a pretty good shock hitting a metal guard rail, what you experienced was similar to the effects of the SAFER barrier because steel guard rails give and deform, while concrete forms a rigid barrier. The biggest drawback to steel guard rails - and the reason they are banned at most facilities - is that they not only deformed, they also came apart and the exposed ends turned into lethal weapons.

The SAFER barrier's square metal tubes also deform, but do not turn into knives and spears in the process. However, they are not effective for crashes where the car's momentum is parallel to the wall or nearly so and they tend to either grab the car or have a rebound effect in shallow-impact geometries. On an oval track, in a corner, centrifugal force sends the car into the wall at a greater impact angle and that's what the SAFER walls are designed for.

Bullrings like Bristol have them all the way around the track because the cars are turning almost all the way around the track, but they are not used on the outside walls of the straightaways on larger tracks. They are used on the inner walls of the straightaways where those walls are far enough from the racing surface that the likely impact angle is high enough for the walls to work (for example, on the inside wall in turn four at Daytona).

On dragstrips, most wall impacts are parallel or nearly so, and the SAFER technology not only won't help, it might make those impacts more serious. In other words, the obvious solution isn't necessarily the correct solution and it's going to take a lot of testing and analysis to come up with something better than the rigid walls that are currently the norm at dragstrips. Perhaps the crushable structure needs to be on the race car, not the wall, for example?


- Larry

Larry may well be onto something. The JFR announcement that they won't be at Houston includes the following statemtent.

"In the near future, JFR will attempt to implement safety measures needed to prevent this type of tragedy from recurring.

According to Force, the team felt the need to address changes in the driver cockpit area but hopes to return to competition April 12-15 for the SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway."

The wording of the JFR release raises the possibility that impact with the wall may not have been the critical element in this accident - even more reason not to jump to any hasty conclusions about how to prevent this from happening in the future.

- Larry

Yes Adger, I sure like to joke around, but c'mon. People ought to know when I'm serious and when I'm not. From the eye witrness accounts - the side impact was the main reason for the brain impacting the skull. Front end of the car hit at an angle and the car whipped around hard, flush to the side. If that barrier could have gave a little. Just a little.

And sure, possibly a gel helmet liner can help. I think that's a good idea and that's what I'm hoping this post will produce. Something must be done soon. It's not a question or a retrospect thought of, "how long has it been since someone last.....DIED. (!)

The situation exists. It needs intelligent thought.

"The less I race the crankier I get..."

wj was working on a seat that was cast for his body like form would that help chuck

QUOTE: "Different retaining wall devices are not going to solve the problem or make it less of an impact. you hit water @ 300 mph you are still dead."

Totally incorrect. You put zero thought into that statement. You can make a wall of different material and how it's affixed to the ground. Unlike water whos composition does not change. Yes, a rain drop will sting at 300 mph, but a wall of water....

Be nice to hear some good ideas.


"The less I race the crankier I get..."

I'm not going to say that the HANS is not a better device than the Hutchens device, but I think it's a little presumptuous to conclude that Eric Medlen's fatality was due to not using a HANS device.

I can hold your head perfectly still, but if I take the steel box you're sitting in and crush it from all sides at high speed down to the size of a coffee mug, you're dead regardless of whether your head moves or not. This is obviously an over exaggeration, but unless you were part of the crash investigation team (including the police department and coroner's office), I don't think you can definitively say that Eric wasn't fatally injured because some other piece of the car came up and hit him in the head as it was disintegrating from the force of impact.

As an example, when Darrell Russell was killed, a HANS device would not have saved him. The ballistic shields that NHRA made all T/F competitors install after Darrell Russell's death behind the driver's compartment MAY have, but even that's not definitive.

I for one can't positively conclude that the HANS device is better than the Hutchens device. I like the looks of the design of the HANS device better, but until I see conclusive evidence from a neutral 3rd party (i.e. not at HANS website), I won't make any conclusions. That said, if I were going to race in T/F and was going to buy one, it would probably be the HANS.

Jason Oldfield
S/G & S/ST 1838

You guys........................Best Regards...but -

We need NEW ideas.

Not your personal opinions on what is currently in production.

"The less I race the crankier I get..."

It will be VERY difficult to create a retaining wall material that will deflect and/or deform to absorb impact and not grab cars that do not hit it "square". And grabbing (like the safer barrier will do) a car and forcing a direction change will likely create a much more dangerous result. Drag cars are not designed to take a hit like a circle track car, if the wall grabs it, the wall may just shred the car and then sling it back out into the track.

I don't know what the solution is, I don't claim to know, but I do know what a safer barrier will do when hit at the angles MOST COMMON in drag racing accidents. It's already happened in circle track racing, and I actually got to see some of the testing done. It rips the side right off a Cup car. Imagine what it would do to a drag car, like a Pro Stock, or any dragster or funny car.

A POSSIBLE solution might be to set the concrete BACK, and install some sort of foam or water bladder in front of it, covered by some sort of continuous cover (overlapping steel plate?) that won't grab a car that does not hit it square. Narrowing the track some in the process, so that the cars do not have room to accelerate much if they turn sharply towards the wall. The other problem with a system like that is keeping the car down and on the track, as opposed to launching it into the crowd. You have to keep the track very visible to the fans, so you can't raise the wall too high. The big cable type fences will also grab and shred a car. The next solution is to raise the stands and set them back. How much and how far will be acceptable to the fans? In the end, sadly, another factor is "how much will it cost?" Human life is priceless, however, unfortunately, there is not an unlimited amount of money available to fund projects like that.

One thing is for sure, they certainly do not need to just "do something" for the sake of saying they're doing something. The last thing they need to do is make the problem worse.

Alan Roehrich


Bring "AA" classes to NHRA Stock Eliminator!

Anything to lessen the damage to the driver. I believe we'll now see F/C cage construction lean towards side impact improvement. Side bars like a sprint car. The basic F/C cage design hasn't changed in 25 years.

"The less I race the crankier I get..."