Your invitation to an intelligent discussion on vintage Porsche safety, Or random thoughts and a lot of questions, anyway.... Options

[horizontally-opposed]

The current post about r_towle's son and his close call with his 914 and a tree has been weighing heavily on me. It has also reminded me why it's important to be thankful to those who engineered the cars so well so long ago.

I posted the below in that thread in response to pictures of a race car with a ton of tubes in the floor to prevent intrusion, but think the subject probably deserves a thread of its own, and that it belongs in the Garage for several reasons, but mainly so the maximum brain trust can have its input. What we need is experienced minds, willing to think unconventionally about how to maximize our chances in the event of a collision on the road, track, or autocross.

I'm not sure I see roll bars as the solution, especially for street cars (and ESPECIALLY if it means your head is next to a nice, über hard bar), but I sure am willing to listen. Anyone who has experience with real crash testing or knowledge of applicable physics would be especially valued here.

Now, to my original post:

As to the bar-laden floor in the race car pictured above, it certainly looks like it will be harder for things to intrude into the cabin in the (let's hope VERY unlikely) event of an impact like the one seen in this thread.

However, one has to wonder if the energy absorbed by the 914 in this instance didn't play a part in preserving the lives of the two kids in the 914. Its "give" took a big chunk of the wallop out of what those kids would have experienced had there been rigid bars there, and the result (I suspect, but you'd have to do an extensive study to find out) was that their necks were subjected to a slightly lesser impact and their internals didn't have to slow down quite as quickly.

If the tree or pole had entered the cockpit a couple of feet back, it would have been a different story, of course. This demonstrates the erratic nature of car "accidents" and the difficulty (impossibility?) that faces engineers as they try to protect occupants. I think about the C-GT fatality in Fontana (having driven a C-GT there just before it happened...) and what killed those two was a side impact in which nothing intruded but the car simply came to a stop too quickly, too instantly. Their necks' didn't have much of a chance, if any. I sometimes wonder if they would have done better without helmets.

I've been thinking a lot about safety of late, and very unconventionally. Not so much because I think we should ditch helmets, HANS devices, etc., but because I think we should really be considering the lessons learned in production-car crash test engineering and how they might be adapted for race cars. Good seats are another key, and I agree with Patrick Long that we should modernize old race cars with modern seats, and wear HANS with helmets out there (extra weight of the helmet makes things tougher on your neck).

Problem is, all this is expensive, and I've seen very little discussion about how HANS or similar devices work without harnesses, i.e. with 3-point belts. Which then makes me wonder if those who autocross are actually less safe in modern street cars with a helmet on. Airbags and full-face helmets are just one thing that come to mind...

This is a hard subject, but there are good lessons for all of us to learn as we consider it.

The best news is we aren't studying it in tragedy with re: to Rocket. And for that, I am very, very thankful.

So let's learn from this near miss together...

pete

[r_towle]

I am going to chime in here just cause I always do anyways.

The statistics for boys 16-24 are the highest risk drivers for accidents, its just a fact. Girls are lower. I have three boys and a girl.
1st boy, off the road into a front yard hedge 24 days after getting his license. All in a volvo.
2nd boy, Rocket...a bit of a slow learner went 4 wheeling in that same volvo...RIP fo that car...tranny broke, axles broke etc.
Also just hit a tree in the 914.
3rd boy is finishing up his suspended license (In MA is you have any offense before you are 18, you loose your license for 90 day, and you attend two all day long driver retraining programs)
From here we start all over with number three, he gets his permit again, then must retake the drivers test.
All the way through this he has been lectured and trained by state troopers. Hope it works, probably wont.

Daughter is 14...she will get a newer car with bags and an automatic and will probably be fine.

Overall we can only do so much in teaching them, then eventually we just get to sit back and watch them make the same mistake we did.

Given that fact, I knew this would happen and I researched as many wrecked 914's as possible right here on the board. I ask for pictures, stories, and reviewed the overall damage.

I was really concerned how well this car would hold up in a serious wreck...I showed my wife, we talked alot about it and agreed that the car held up pretty well, no airbags and all.

We all survived our youth when we wrecked cars with no airbags, no ABS, no traction control etc etc.

When reviewing the wrecked cars, and seeing this car up close and personal I still stand firmly by the decision I made to allow him to drive the car in the first place. It held up. I just got home with a new tub so he can fix that up and continue, hopefully a bit more educated in how strong trees are and that the laws of physics are true.

Overall I would not add anything to the car, it needs to collapse and use the crumple zones to absorb the impact. If the car was stiff the human would take more impact and that could result in much more injury.

BTW,
He was not drinking nor doing drugs....just driving like we all did when we were 20 and invincible. He was checked out by the polics and doctors...standard practice stuff. He was clean and so was the passenger.

Rich