Phokaioglaukos

Not clear where this is heading. The April Fastrack News says:

SOLO II SAFETY
- There is no action pending at this
time to change the Solo II helmet rules.
Additional testing and investigation are
in progress. (ref. 04-143)

JBH

Someone said early on that SCCA requires removal or deactivation of the air bags - what was the reasoning behind that decision?

RJay

In speaking with Joe Marko a couple of weeks ago, he told me that HMS had comissioned a study on this subject. The results did confirm exactly what you'd expect. Air bags aren't designed to be used in conjunction with helmets and wearing a helmet in an air bag equipped automobile has issues. Both open face and FF helmets had their issues. In the case of OF helmets, there is a tendency for the airbag to catch the leading edge at the top of the helmet and try to rip it off the top of your head. It either succeeds or forces the head backward placing strain on the neck, not good. I think you can draw your own conclusions as to whether you really want a live airbag on the race track. Personally, from an AX standpoint, I wouldn't give this issue a second thought, as if I wrecked hard enough there to deploy an airbag, I probably deserve a good slap upside the head anyway.

Phokaioglaukos

Hmm. My local PCA requires helmets for DEs, and I have a FF one. Is it easy to disconnect the airbags for DE days?

Matt Marks

RJ, who is Joe Marko/HMS?

Are the test results available?

SundayDriver

Just to be clear - SCCA has always (AFAIK) required this for race cars per the GCR. The helmet issue is only for those activities (SOLO) where street cars run under rules other than the Racing GCR. The logic seems pretty clear in this case - air bags are untested and unproven with cages, full harnesses and all the other required equipment that has years of study.

RJay

Joe is the owner of HMS Motorsport, a commercial retailer here in the Boston area. Joe has made a specialty of understanding safety issues, is working with several NASCAR teams, as well as the US importer for Schroth. If I recall correctly the sled testing was performed by Deplhi. The results as far as I know have not been published, I've not seen them and I'm just relating his comments on the subject of FF versus OF helmets and air bags.

Joe was a guest speaker at the PCA-NER intro to Driver-Ed and AX meeting recently where he spoke briefly on this subject. He was adamant that he was not making any recommendation to disable your airbags. My impression, however, that this was that motivated more from a legality standpoint than a safety one. Joe tracks a Mini, I failed to ask him what he has done to it in this regard. I'd add I have no idea whether this testing was done with 3 pt belts or harnesses which one might suspect could influence the results.

Just stepping back for a moment, anyone who's been paying attention to discussion here over the past few weeks understands that safety is an extremely complex subject. Were I in a street car, with out race seats and a harness, until there's further data, I, personally, would leave things as they are and hope I never wind up a statistic pro or con in a future study. Again personally, if there were one in my race car where I have a race seat, harnesses, hans device, I, and just what I would do not a recommendation for anyone else, would disable it. I've certainly never seen anyone add airbags to a race car! I don't think enough work has been done yet to come to any fully formed conclusions, but it seems to me that its just common sense to rely on a system of components that have been designed to work together, rather than an ad hoc collection of devices.

Geo

Actually, it's only for club racing.

My understanding is that there is also a GCR for Solo. Now, I'm not very familiar with Solo so someone can correct me, but that is what I was told.

SundayDriver

I thought that is what I just said using terms like "race car" and "racing GCR".

Phokaioglaukos

The issue is harder for those of us with race seats, rollbars (not cages) and harnesses who do a handful or so DE events each year. Most of the miles will be on the street with 3-point belt and no helmet, but there will be events on the track with 6-point harness and helmet. Seems it might be nice to disable the airbags, at least the front airbags, for those events only.

Geo

Shoot. You did say racing GCR and I just glanced right over it. So sorry.

John Brown

Followed up on this a couple weeks back.

The testing leading to the SCCA notice was in F1 type configuration, and was intended only to review potential use of airbags in F1. You can pull up the test.

IMHO. Based on the above testing which was NOT directly applicable, the SCCA is being extremely premature in even making the announcement, much less considering any rulemaking. Not different than the SFI 2 year belt reaction by the sanctioning bodies.

Geo, you have mentioned a couple of times that you have the SFI testing for belts. I would very much like to read that spec.

Someone mentioned Ford testing; likewise would like to be pointed toward that information.

Concur enthusiastically with the suggestion to go with FIA harness and have done so.

The only good news from all of this is that those running Driver Education now have an endless supply of very reasonably priced harness. At least until the inevitable and lamentable move is made to apply yet more of the racing requirements to DE.

mitch236

The problem is that while DE used to be a "track what you drive" and very grass roots in nature has become a training grounds for future racers. Also the days of the lowly HP cars lumbering around the track have been replaced with street cars that would have been very competitive on the professional level a few years back. DE is a safer form of racing but still has the potential for danger and requiring safety equipment in the higher run groups is wise, IMO.

Geo

It may take some doing. I can't remember if I got it electronically or if I got hard copy. If it's electronic a search through my old computer should turn it up. If it's hard copy it may take an archeologist.

I'll see what I can do.

RJay

It wouldn't surprise me to see some form of H&N requirement in the upper run groups in the next few years. Particularly in Red where the notion of a late pass often times seems to extend to corner exit