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

[skeates]

I would agree with what seems to be the general consensus of the discussion thus far. These cars are designed amazingly well when it comes to crash safety (especially considering their vintage). The "American philosophy" behind car safety seems to be gregariously passive. I know many people who justified their F**d expeditions because of the "extra metal" around them if someone were to hit them.

What people don't seem to understand it that, yes that extra metal will prevent another car from crushing into yours as much, but it also dramatically increases the forces to which the driver is subject to. Its called conservation of energy! Less energy is "absorbed" in the twisting, bending, and crushing of the cars frames which means that the rest of the car (of which you as the driver are a part) receives the remainder of the energy...enter the umteen million airbags in modern vehicles. Passive crash safety is all an energy game. Trying to get rid of the cars energy without imparting it onto the driver. If we start messing with the crush zones in the car (i.e. adding tubular frames and what not) the driver must be prepared to take this extra load! In a full race set-up many extra provisions are added to the car specifically designed to safely decelerate the driver...unfortunately these provisions require not only a controlled environment (i.e. the race track), but they also render your car very inconvenient to drive as a daily driver.

With all that said, I think that the engineers at Porsche knew what they were doing and their brilliance is shown every time we see pictures of mangled 914s who have left their passengers perfectly intact (though that can't be said of the passengers pocket books (IMG:style_emoticons/default/headbang.gif) ). For those of us who drive our cars on the street, the best safety upgrade is educating and preparing the (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif). Beyond that I would say either public transportation or a large suit of bubble wrap.

As far as preventing people from adding things to their car that they think is safe but in fact might kill them...again, only driver education will have any effect here. Most companies who sell the stuff only care about the $$$. They tend not to tell you why you shouldn't use their product...just how much cheaper theirs is from the next guys. That job is left to the consumer and the educators...Then again, I've been known to get cynical around big business (IMG:style_emoticons/default/happy11.gif)