Driver killed at Pacific Raceways yesterday
 

Unfortunate, but then if motorsports were completely safe, I'm not sure as many people would be in them.

http://www.seattlepi.com/motorsports/423206_kent11.html

crap. that's terrible..

that sucks to hear. R.I.P.




on a side note: why is one of the tags 'alcohol'. Was he drinking or a reference to the fuel

Apparently he was going 270+ MPH when he deployed the parachutes.

The fuel.

R.i.p.

oh man. This is sad to read. RIP

Wow. That's really sad. It seems like if Mark Webber can walk away from his sub orbital flight there should be some safety improvements to drag racing that could have kept him alive. :(

KE = 0.5 mv^2... I think keeping it on the road is probably the best anyone can do with about 9000 hp. Just think of fuel injectors that are like garden hoses.

I'm sure the driver believed that this is the best way to go. I'll leave the sadness to his family and just hope that there's top fuel dragsters where ever he's gone.

Mark Webber hit the back of the Lotus while going around 190mph with the Lotus braking hard, so maybe down to 140mph already. He then flipped up into the air and landed on his crash structure before hitting a wall of tires 3 deep sideways.

This guy was going 270mph when the shoots deployed and then failed. He then hit the nets head-on, still going close to that fast. There is a BIG difference between 190mph and 270mph.

I'm reminded of Richard Hammond's line from that one Top Gear episode about a particular Koenigsegg I think it was. Something like "But what a way to go! I'd imagine you reach the Pearly Gates going backwards in a fireball, step out and go 'Where're all the women at?!'"

It's a solvable problem and the technology to solve it probably exists today.

The article says the frame crushed him and the netting stopped him too quickly. These things can be looked at and fixed so this type of thing is avoided next time. it wasn't too long ago that people thought surviving a 200mph accident was unachievable. The teams and rule makers made it important and a requirement and the talented engineers went to work and solved the problem.

Just because it hasn't been done before doesn't mean it can't be done.

I completely agree, though I'm not as confident that the technology exists today. Someday we'll have those foam ball things from Speed Racer and racing deaths will be a thing of the past :D:

Out of pure speculation, I'd bet the netting is an easier area to improve than the frame. It's a razor's edge balance between crumple zone strength across different speeds. A stiff enough chassis to absorb a 270mph impact will likely be far too stiff at 120mph etc.

True the whole chassis can't be too stiff. You want it to flex and crumple. Just not the part around the driver. Creating a safety cage or safety cell should be doable. It will take some redesign on the part of the chassis designers but I'm sure they'd be up for the task provided the governing body mandates it as a safety requirement.

Anyway I didn't want to go off topic. It's a sad event and I hope it spurs some re-examination of the safety rules that prevent this type of tragedy from happening again.

Root cause is parachute failure, not frame and netting failure. Surviving a 200 mph crash depends on the circumstances of the impact. Taking flight in Webber's case was probably more of a god send. The fact that he took flight probably slowed him way down, the fact that he landed upside down and rolled was probably a god send too. Watch the myth busters on the difference between the KE in a 50 mph to a 100 mph.

With race cars you deal with two very contradictory challenges. Energy absorption rate/energy dissipation capacity (impact structure) and intrusion (cage). When you engineer a crash structure you engineer it to 60g. I'd love to see anyone create a crash structure that isn't a mile long that rides at 60g for a 270 mph crash. And mind you this is perfectly perpendicular. Beyond 60g, your brain hits the inside of your skull hard enough to kill you, let alone what happens to the rest of your organs. This is of course only if the body of the car and you are coupled together.

Engineering solutions for crash safety is inherently defining a controlled situation for an uncontrolled situation. In the end, it's all about how many people are dying because of it, how much does that cost, and how much does it cost to engineer a solution for that. You also have to remember that if you make it too safe, the appeal also goes away. You can't possibly argue with me that this guy didn't get a rush off skirting death every time he got into that car.

With that said, it's probably most practical to solve the issue with the parachute. Who packs it, who certifies it, etc... You have to remember that there are no brakes on these cars and with the tiny wheels and tires up front, there's probably no steering either. Those cars are completely dependent on the parachute to deploy to slow and straighten the car. Maybe they just need to add a redundant system in case of failure. Something that jettisons the whole failed pack and deploys another.

I don't think this is off topic at all. We posted it as a piece of news and this is perfectly relevant to the discussion.

The root cause of the accident was the parachute failing but the cause of death was how the car interacted with the net and then how the car reacted to the impact. Of course you need to deal with how to prevent the chute from failing but if the guy had a mile of runoff area he would have had a much gentler impact and decelleration. As far as thrills I think every driver that races anything is gets the thrill from the rush of speed and racing more that seeking death. I don't think there are any drivers out there that pine for the days of sitting on gas cans with cotton pants and leather helmets. The death rate in the post WWII racing era was huge and the speeds were much lower than they are today. Ask any modern driver if he wants less safety equipment and see what they say. The engineers are constantly able to come up with improvements if mandated to by the regs. That add safety as well as perform.

I'm not saying it's an easy problem but if they are forced to address it they will come up with a solution.

Why don't I just take the brakes away from your car and tell the manufacturers to engineer your car to keep you from dying when you can't stop?

I was there when this happened. Still hard to believe it happened at all.

They have technology for the nitro drags to deploy emergency parachutes after 300 feet of the finish line. $300 is all it costs for this system (for nitro class anyway). I dont understand why there is not a requirement for top alcohol dragsters to have these. Maybe now they will make it a requirement since this is the second death in NHRA within 31 days. Sad it takes lives for them to figure in more safety requirements.

Yeah. Thanks for playing. You've just shown your ineptitude. You're missing my point.

Based on that logic why have airbags and crumple zones since we already have brakes?

Wow, looks like I've offended someone. I think you've shown your "ineptitude" Mr. Take-it-personally. I didn't realize we resort to attacking people personally.

They don't have crumple zones and air bags on racecars based on street cars, what do you have to say about that? Are the caged cars more safe than our street cars? Airbags and crumple zones are engineered for very specific conditions I.E. the 60-75 mph limit and the mean speeds we see in traffic. You think the crumple zone on the RX-8 means anything with the Speedsource car? If these airbags and crumple zones are so awesome why take them out on race cars? This goes back to my point that you have to be able to engineer to a very specific situation. Once you throw those things out the window (i.e. go 120+ mph) those systems don't do much.

Go find me a racecar based on a street car that hasn't thrown all that out, AKA, multi-point cage and bracing where all the crumple zones are. Seat belts that preload you in, cages that alter the way the vehicle handles intrusion. What about rally cars? where basically all you can do is put in as many points as you can and protect the people from intrustion, hope to god they don't leave the car and the g loading isn't so high that your guts hit your skeleton?

Before you insulted my eptitude, I was actually contemplating what kind of crush structure it would take to meet the 60g loading at 300 mph. I just went ahead and ran some rough numbers:

If you want to take 440 ft/s to 0 in a 60 g loading. You get a distance of 50.1 feet. The assumptions made here are, the car weighs 1000 lbs (it's more like 1300 with driver and running gear from what I read, 1000 is a nice round number to work with.) The cars currently have a wheel base of 25 feet. I challenge you to fit the crush zone in, or we could design it for a lower g loading and always hope something has slowed the car down prior to impact. This is purely dead on perpendicular impact mind you.

So to the crush structure, again, I'm going to be generous and assume there's a 24 x 24 in. area in the front of one of these cars. Again, 1000 lb and 60 g load... 60000 lbs of force over a 576 in^2 area = 104 psi. There's coring material that definitely rides down at that rate in a lab, when you change the load rate, the curves are different.

So assuming you can put a 24" x 24" x 50.1 ft column of crush structure in front of a car with a 25 ft wheelbase. You can check my numbers if you want, but I did this roughly just to get an idea of how hard it would be. Would be glad to talk more about it or maybe my approach is too conventional and what we need is to put the crush structure on the other end of it and require all drag strips to install what basically would be bumper lanes.

This is the kind of stuff I nerd out on. I engineered the crush structure on the FSAE car I helped design and build (mind you one of the only working ones at that competition since they allow beer cans through tech). I'm not trying to be a smart ass, but I like to be realistic, crash dynamics is something that's always been interesting to me. So when you narrow the discussion to "they must review this and mandate more safety" without considering the challenge itself, I'm just going to turn it into a joke, but apparently that was taken personally.

Skip between points much? You were talking about my street car and I responded to your statement about my street car. I in no way suggested that airbags and crumple zones from a street car were a solution for a race car. I'm aware of the differences in physics, approaches, and requirements of the two different applications. I agree they need different solutions.

As far as the rest of your point that's exactly what I'm talking about. I put a problem out there and in a short span of time you, by yourself, have come up with a few rough calculations and ideas on how to address the situation.

The reason I skipped to the "mandate safety" part is because this discussion will end up that engineers won't just do it because it will add cost and weight etc. You need the rules to require every team come up with a design or every track conform to the requirements so there is a level playing field to compete on.

As far as getting personal, you took a pot shot at me and I responded in kind. If you want to put the sling shots away and have a discussion on what could be done I'd be up for it.

I also have an engineering background and have made far heavier things go far faster and withstand higher pressures. The engineering costs, analysis, and materials are more expensive than most drag racing teams would prefer to spend but, as I said, solvable problems.

I like your idea on engineering a crash bumper. That was the point I was alluding to. It was the net and the deceleration that caused the problem. It could be a combination of upgrading the car and the facilities.

I would have thought that the end of line safety nets would be set up like they use on carriers to stop aircraft? That way, it is not like hitting a brick wall. A slowed deceleration, albeit a rapid slowed....

Believe it or not, planes landing on a carrier are going slower than this guy was going. I want to say F-14's land at something like 130mph? This guy was going 270mph.



Honestly guys, the real issue is why he didn't have a $300 back-up chute... This seems about as absurd to me as Dale Earnhardt not wearing a HANS device.

Agreed planes land at a slower speed but the concept should work just as well. If I remember, the typical FA-18 landing speed is 145 kts at a typical load configured for a return. Speeds change based on weight but 145kts is close enough and that is about 167 mph. For a catch net, they would just need to increase the decelartion distance. I would think that anything but a sudden stop would be better.

I agree that these guys should have backup systems though.