Roll Bar in a street car discussion Options

[Scott S]

Hi All. I posted this over on Pelican, thought it might be relevant here too.

I know there have been many discussions on the safety putting a roll bar/cage in a street driven car. I am not a racer, so it really didn't pertain to me at all. However, yesterday I saw first hand the injuries that can occur.

16 year old girl driving her dads Miata with him in the passenger seat. There is speculation that she was driving on her permit, practicing for her drivers license. She was driving at a slow speed, simply making a right hand turn on to a side street. She clipped the curb - something we all have done. Curb was tall enough that it shook the car pretty good (again, speculation, but knowing the corner I would guess a wheel would have been bent and the car knocked out of alignment ).

Both are in the hospital with concussions, one of them needed several stiches from injuries caused by their heads impacting the roll bar.

I don't know if the dad autocrossed the car or what, or if the bar was just for looks. I do know the car had stock seat belts.

Scary stuff.

[DBCooper]

But I never said that, Andy. Did you read the first post in this thread? Bumped a curb and two people in the hospital? That's not a big enough deal? Like I said, do whatever you want, but people do get hurt so don't make that choice without at least knowing the issues. That's not fair? You think it's better to not talk about it at all?

[SirAndy]

But I never said that, Andy. Did you read the first post in this thread? Bumped a curb and two people in the hospital? That's not a big enough deal?

But that wasn't in a 914 and we don't know how that cage was build and how far their heads were from the cage and if it was padded.

That's A LOT of unknowns to make such a blanket statement!


What i am telling you is that in my car my head is no closer to my (padded) roll bar than it is to (covered) solid metal in my daily driver sedan.

I still have no idea why you insist that one somehow is going to kill me while the other one is perfectly acceptable?
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