Why?

[Bill Baer]

Originally Posted by rayfin

It seems to me that $$$ may have something to do with it.

Rayfin

Well that was my first thought also.
However after thinking about it for a while I think a bigger motivation was to protect the SFI from litigation (i.e. being sued)
Look at it from this perspective if you were the organization responsible for setting standards and it came to your attention that the driver restraint systems you were certifying potentially lost half of their strength after the first year and 4/5 of their strength after the second year then if you didn’t mandate their replacement after two years you have a serious potential to be found negligent if one of the restraints fails during an accident.

Now one could argue that most racecars don’t sit in the sun continuously and therefore the restraint systems may not degrade as rapidly as the testing shows however there may be some, in warmer climates that are outside almost continuously so to be conservative the SFI needs to plan for the (this) worst possible scenario.

As long as we live in a society where people try to sue every time there is a tragedy in motorsports there will always be a need for safety equipment manufactures and their standards organizations to continue to come up with higher and higher standards for safety and yes, we racers will pay for it, but it is we who will benefit from them and ultimately there may be just a few less of us who are severely injured or die racing.