Driver's safety belt containment, prone/forward versus sitting up

[bvillercr]

Nathan, in a head on crash into a wall you have instant stop.  In lsr it could take 15 seconds or more to stop, and with every impact the car slows down and the g force would decrease.  When talking head on collisions is the 45 mph speed your variable?

[RichFox]

Gwillard ; I apologize. I just must be stupid. I thought that almost everyone here was making the point that landing attitude of flying Bonneville cars is unpredictable and in no way dictated by starting line orientation. Which calls to question, Why is the prone head forward less safe than prone feet forward? Or semi reclining? From your earlier posts I thought that is the conclusion you have come to. If I have been wrong my sincere regrets. 

[NathanStewart]

Nathan, in a head on crash into a wall you have instant stop.  In lsr it could take 15 seconds or more to stop, and with every impact the car slows down and the g force would decrease.  When talking head on collisions is the 45 mph speed your variable?

I guess I'm narrowing the scope down to one major impact and not impact after impact after impact in a roll over or whatever.  It's the first big impact that's going to create the most force that will kill you.  And I'm not too generally concerned with whether or not the vehicle is coming to a stop during our hypothetical impact.  Force is simply mass time acceleration or in the case of our impact deceleration and all we care about is the force transmitted to the driver.  There is way more force being created in a wreck at Bonneville, even though the vehicle may not come to an instant stop, simply because we're traveling at a faster speed

You stated that a front end crash on the salt does not have the same dynamics as a front end crash on the street and at the lowest level I agree with what you're saying.  A head-on impact in a street car will be with a wall or a tree or a building or whatever whereas a head-on impact at Bonneville means you've gone airbone somehow and are coming back down like a crashing airplane.  Now, my point is that in a flip over accident, much like the Danny Thompson wreck, the impact force applied to the driver when the top of the car hits the ground and the car is decelerated from 250 mph to say 100 mph is probably equal to or greather than driving into a wall at a slightly slower speed.  Even though the scenarios are different the force transmitted to the driver is very similar if not the same. 

So, even though you're not driving into a wall, tree, or building out on the salt, the force applied to the driver when some part of the vehicle hits the ground would be of the same magnitude as if you were to crash into an immovable object.

[Saltfever]

Opinions may be 50/50 on whether there is a best direction for the human body to attenuate extreme force. I am not qualified to render an opinion. Although, NASA’s multi-billions of dollar of research seems to like a semi-reclined position and DocBeech’s Posting was educational. It seems to be the consensus here that the direction of any crash force applied to a body is random and unpredictable. Further, there is no existing data to support assumptions about crash direction. If the direction of force is unpredictable then the best driver orientation is equally unpredictable. I wonder what evidence was weighed to arrive at the opinion to ban 5050.

[Glen]

If you open up the ACK Attack window on the front page of this site and click on the BuB Meet there is a picture of a long wheel base lay down on top head first. no belts,no cage etc.
Not even a knee slapper. other issues other then being pitched off remain to be seen.
Just a point of interest, don't know if it's SCTA/BNI Legal>

[Gwillard]

Gwillard ; I apologize. I just must be stupid. I thought that almost everyone here was making the point that landing attitude of flying Bonneville cars is unpredictable and in no way dictated by starting line orientation. Which calls to question, Why is the prone head forward less safe than prone feet forward? Or semi reclining? From your earlier posts I thought that is the conclusion you have come to. If I have been wrong my sincere regrets. 

I am in agreement that orientation of the driver is of little importance. Driver location is far more critical.

[RichFox]

OK. But don't all the drivers occupy pretty much the same space. Aft of the front wheel. Forward of the engine/trans. Followed by the rear wheel. I can't think of any modern bike liner that is different and am not sure how driver location should be addressed or if it should.

[Gwillard]

OK. But don't all the drivers occupy pretty much the same space. Aft of the front wheel. Forward of the engine/trans. Followed by the rear wheel. I can't think of any modern bike liner that is different and am not sure how driver location should be addressed or if it should.

If we are discussing bike 'liners then I would agree that most, if not all, have the driver in fron of the engine, behind front wheel. But I don't think most in this discussion have limited their comments to bike 'liners only. I haven't.
Ideally the driver is in a reclined position. Not prone or supine, not erect as in a sprint or midget.
Driver should be as close to cg as possible. Either end outside the wheelbase is not very close to the cg.
But, like I said, it is up to the designer/builder to decide whether to bet the drivers life that an accident will not result in a situation that severely damages the cockpit of the vehicle.
The designer/builder must also accept that a sanctioning body may not approve their design and may pull approval at any time. Entire classes of cars have been relegated to storage because of rule canges, etc. NASCAR, IRL, F1 all have done so in recent years.

[RichFox]

OK. I thought the entire point of Jack's polls was to bring attention to his 5050 bike liner being red tagged as a sidecar bike liner when it's really pretty much the same as the rest of them. Looks different. But not as different as one with the driver outside the wheel base would look. And yes a sanctioning body has the option of ruling against a particular design on a whim. But the SCTA isn't normally like that, no matter what those ruled against say. I doubt these polls are going to help Jacks cause. But Landracing.com allows him to vent his grievance and this is the way he chose to do it.

[nebulous]

5050 was banned not because of a bad design. IT passed 6yrs of expert scrutiny by SCTA inspection teams ! It was banned because  I cannot produce a published document stating prone forward can be a safe way to control a vehicle! Like all the documents that must exist that cover all situations of all vehicles that participate in scta/bni Sounds kinda fishy to me! "we" would never ban inovation or progress , the very thing LSR stands for!

[Dr Goggles]

OK. But don't all the drivers occupy pretty much the same space. Aft of the front wheel. Forward of the engine/trans. Followed by the rear wheel. I can't think of any modern bike liner that is different and am not sure how driver location should be addressed or if it should.

I know it doesn't count because it's down under but spare a thought for Ross as we are about to revert to the SCTA rulebook......

http://www.landracing.com/forum/index.php/topic,9033.msg146384.html#msg146384

[RichFox]

If thinking of running that at an SCTA meet, I would sure get a definitive ruling, in writing, and notarized, before paying the tariff to Long Beach. And don't let Gwillard  see it until after record runs.

[Gwillard]

If thinking of running that at an SCTA meet, I would sure get a definitive ruling, in writing, and notarized, before paying the tariff to Long Beach. And don't let Gwillard  see it until after record runs.

What the hell? The man asked a question, I gave him a factual answer. I was asked my opinion, I gave it. No call to slam people just because you don't agree with the facts they present or the opinion they expressed that was asked for.

[NathanStewart]

I think Rich is just giving you a hard time man.

[Gwillard]

I think Rich is just giving you a hard time man.

Yeah, I know. It's all good.