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

I think about accidents and their consequences often. Like every time I open the newspaper. It occurs to me that far too much emphasis is put on hardware, and not on operator education. Far too many unqualified people have operators permits ("drivers licenses"), far too many drivers, both qualified and unqualified, fail to take the task seriously, and far too many drivers put themselves in unacceptable situations because of bad choices. Our society's group inability to accept responsibility and our government's eagerness to protect us all at no inconvenience to anyone, and without thinking the problem through, has put us where we are.
If you operate a motor vehicle unsafely for road conditions, the likelihood of having an "incident" (NOT an "accident") is far higher than if you practice driving as common sense dictates. (Why to they call it "common sense" when it's so uncommon?) If you're distracted in any way from the task at hand, you should not be doing that task. PUT DOWN THAT BURRITO AND STEP AWAY FROM THE WHEEL!
Cellphone, too, and that CD you're about to change in the CD player. And slip back another 60 feet from that guy's rear bumper. That beer you had before you left? Get a designated driver! Just 'cause you're not a .08, doesn't mean you're not impaired ...............

Just my 2 cents worth, The Cap'n, the voice no one wants to hear .........

With you all the way down the line, Cap'n. I didn't have to parallel park or get on the freeway to get a DL. Re-diculous. I wonder how people would drive if they all had to ride a bike one day a week. Or just once a month. Around other cars. Or, hey, just have them drive a 914 in SF or LA or NY or....

BUT, I want to talk about the moment past that, the moment when all the right decisions and all the best sense can no longer protect you -- the moment when it really is the car that must fight for your life and surrender its own.

Because it CAN happen to any of us, no matter how smart, how good, or how lucky. You are right for saying the first line of defense is the BRAIN behind the wheel. But I don't want to get into a tangent about smart driving.

I want to foster a discussion that might prevent someone from bolting something into their car that might kill or hurt them when they thought they were adding safety.

And get all of us to consider carefully the possibility that bad things can (and do) happen. That alone should make us safer.

Cheers,

pete

Very well said, and I totally agree. What I see, even on the streets of a small city, is dreadful. It has become very rare to see anyone using 'common sense' anymore.

Looks like we're headed off topic. Ah well, I tried.

pete

Pete,

When I was 19 My car hit ice and slid sideways into a truck. The truck hit me head onwith me going 45 and him going 45 for a total of 90mph. My car was ripped in half. My girlfriend died on impact and I should have died as well. Now, to address the point, there will always be these kinds of accidents that will happen and there is nothing you can do about them. No driver instruction or car safety is going to prevent this. However, because of this accident I questioned my driving ability and decided I should have been able to save the slide. I went up to the mountains and found ice to try to save some slides. I found that is was near impossible to do so and moved on with my life. Now I am a big advocate for getting anyone and everyone out to the AX courses as everyone will learn from it. We do need to have more courses for people before they get their license. Autocross would be a great thing to have people do for a drivers education. You don't have to go all out but it does teach you about emergency braking and other things about your car that you would never learn anywhere else.

If you think I took this off course, I'm sorry for that. My point is, in MOST cases the person in a situation where the car needs to save him has put himself into a situation in which he shouldn't be. As for safety equipment, what percentage of the population actually WEARS seatbelts? How many people have tried to disconnect/shut off their air bags? 5 MPH bumpers don't work if you're 10 feet behind someone at 70 MPH when they nail their brakes ............ And they think proximity avoidance warnings are gonna stop people from doing dumb things?

Sure, it's nice (and important) to have well engineered "crush zones" (making repairs shockingly expensive, however, in modern cars), but people still tailgate, dart from lane to lane, and do other indefensible things on the road.

The Cap'n

Race cars are race cars; street cars are street cars. We try to cross the line, make something that is both, but it really does compromise both.

In a race car, you have a stiff structure around you, you have seats that are good at keeping you in one place, belts that make sure you stay in that place, safety netting to make sure no parts of you (say your arms) get into a different area, helmets to make sure your skull stays intact, and head/neck restraints to make sure your neck doesn't break. Everything is very solid, very stiff, and you are very very supported and your movement is contained. Your body decelerates at pretty close to the same rate as the rest of the car, though there is some "give" in the belts and the seat mounting generally. One of the most important things is to prevent any intrusions into the driver's area, because decelerating the driver is something that the seat/belts/HANS/nets/etc. already deal with.

Street cars rely much more on energy absorption. Crumple zones being the main example that comes to mind. Those absorb some of the energy from a crash, and extend the amount of time that it takes to decelerate (or less often, accelerate) the car and the occupants. The occupants of the car are much less restrained, even in cases where the belts "pre-tension" and sixty-eight airbags go off. This means they continue to move at the same rate the car used to be moving at, and then get decelerated when they hit something--the limit of travel of the belt, the airbag, the dashboard, the windshield, the steering wheel.... So you really need for the rest of the car to be slowing more gradually, so there isn't as large a speed difference when the occupants hit it.

These two systems work quite differently. The street car has to decelerate more gently than the race car, so it crushes around the cockpit. The race car can decelerate less gently, so it can be strong and stiff to prevent anything "else" from getting too close to the driver. The street car also has to protect anyone sitting in all seats in the vehicle, while the race car only has one person in it. That gives less leeway in where the street car can crush (e.g., if the passenger seat area always crumpled, that's OK in a race car that never has a passenger...).

The safety systems in a car are indeed systems. In particular, modern street cars and modern race cars have been engineered so their parts all work together in the event of a wreck. Older cars were not always the recipients of such careful thought, but there are certainly places where some of them got it right.

Check the front and rear of the 914, for instance. Huuuuuuuge crumple zones! You are generally going to be a lot safer getting hit from the front or the rear in a 914 than getting hit in the side.

What can you do do shore up the side-impact capabilities of a 914? You could raise it back up to factory ride height. The longitudinal under the door is pretty strong, and gives you at least a little crush room--if it isn't below the bumper of the car hitting you. You can install mid-73 or later doors. These have the (heavy) beams inside them. Or you could go beyond that, and build a structure inside the door that is stronger. Of course, you have to rely on the door latches and such, plus the fact that there are gaps between the doors and the body. So you could gut the doors, weld them in place, and build "NASCAR bars" inside them. Plus you probably don't want them to be strong enough that they never crush at all...

Of course, you start reducing the streetability of the car pretty quickly at that point.

I don't really have any good ideas on what you can do to make a 914 a more crash-worthy street car. I've done some thinking about it, and every thing I have personally thought of is a compromise of some kind, making the 914 less of a street car...

--DD

I agree. The 914 though, from some of the wreckage posts, show that it can handle alot. Dr evil, r-towle, etc, cars can vouch for that. I've believe that because of the autobahn, German cars are generally much safer. When you see the safety and design of other cars of the era (like American Cars) they don't seem to be nearly as equipped to avoid a crash, and have the occupants survive the crash (read 'unsafe at any speed' from nader, and he's generally right). But in any case, an older car probably isn't going to do as well as a newer car, with their tougher crash standards. And since crashes are pretty random (from the bump at a parking lot or light, to a head on, or spinning out) its hard to judge how one will do. Its probably alot more luck than anything else.

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

One of my cars has a full roll-cage. The other does not. On the street I feel safer in the non roll-cage equipped car because of the crumple zones. There aren't any crumple zones in the roll-cage equipped car. Now if the I lost it in a turn, hit a berm and the car started rolling...?

The autobahn is safer because the drivers are safer, not necessarily the cars. When Germans get in their cars, they are there to drive. Not eat, talk on the phone or do their makeup.

I think that cages in street cars may be more dangerous than nothing. In a racecar you're strapped into a race seat with a 5 point belt and you have a helmet on and you should have SFI padding on the cage at least where your helmet could hit the cage. In a street car with a cage you won't have a helmet on for sure, maybe not the seat or the 5 point belts, and probably not the SFI padding.
I'm not even convinced that 5 point belts are safer overall in a street car. They hold you in place really well, right up to the point where your neck breaks a la Earnhardt and Senna, without a Hans device.
I haven't offered up any suggestions, just criticisms.
I'm with the Cap'n on this one, the biggest problem is the nut behind the wheel. Unfortunately while you can train yourself you can't train everyone else, believe me I've been trying for years and I haven't made any headway at all.
That said, I've been driving like a maniac for 26 years with a grand total of one accident. When I was 17 I was rear-ended at a signal light. Not much opportunity to avoid that one, I saw it coming and I flinched, I admit it.

that is a good point, but I still think, overall, German cars will survive better. I remember Nader's book brought up alot of good points (beyond the Corvair) and when I see classic American cars to euro counterparts, I can see what he was referring to. Also, accidents will happen, and you have to build to avoid them, but also survive them. If your national highway speed is 100+ vs our 65 max, you have to build a car that can survive much more. But yes, the drivers do play alot into that equation.

The original post was a discussion of the safety of a 914 rather than how competance plays into that scheme. There will always to be, and will continue to be situations and circumstances where driver competance has no effect on the outcome. The car however CAN have an effect, and that's what I think Pete is focussing on. I don't mean to be abrupt, so appologies for that if that's how it seems.

You may consider yourself a good driver displaying good judgement and road skills, but the "victim of circumstance" potential will always be there so we rely on the car to help us survive.

Andys

Couple of things Pete:

Let's get this out of the way first; I agree with John, Rich and Elliot. Drivers need to be safer and boys are bad. Here's what I think is interesting. Once I began to race (Skip Barber School/Bob Bondurant School) I became a much better/saffer driver on the street. PCA allows 16 year old drivers at the autocross events now (here at least). Proper education would probably help a lot of this. If gven in a "Race School" format, it might just sink in to the young male.

Back on the topic of automobile saftey.

We almost lost my friends Mom about a year ago to a drunk driver. It was a dual 45mph head on collision. She was old and frail and she lived... 6 months in the hospital but she's up and around now do to the crumple zones (which I believe Mercedes first engineered) in her new Camary Hybrid.

I agree. If Rocket was in the full tube car he may not be doing so well right now. I had the "exact" same thoughts.

911's and 914's as "vintage" Porsche's are pretty damn small but pretty damn safe IMHO. Both have crumple zones in the front and rear of the passenger compartment that I have seen fold on many occasions protecting the driver and the occupants.

I do think a properly padded roll hoop could be benifitial in a street car in the event of a roll over.

Carry on.

I got rear ended while sitting in my RED pick-up truck at a stop sign.
In 40 odd years of driving, that's it. I admit, there is some luck involved, but I consider driving a job that requires all your attention. I also operate under the assumption that everyone out on the road is trying to kill me & the sumbitch that can get me ain't been born yet. This requires planning moves, looking ahead and spotting the clown that is really trying to kill me....as I said, a full time job.

My DD is a 93 MR2. If there is a jerk that is gonna cut in line, they will pick the small car 95% of the time....that would be me. That guy usually gets in, but I let them know I'm there....assholes. I have an ego also, but it ain't worth any dents in Mr.2.

I drove my caged 914 on the street for a while.....right up to the time I bonked my haid on the upper longitudinal bar.....with a helmet on, 3 point belt and padded bar.
Knocked me goofy. Just hit a few bumps on a skid pad. The upper section of the cage went away soon there after. I have seen some real nice door intrusion bars here of late, but what about the head/neck?

Nope, the Cap'n has the right idea. Learn to drive to avoid the idiots that don't know how.....then hope for some luck. The crash worthiness of a 914 is moot if you don't have one. Nothing is safe or safer under the proper circumstances.

Excuse me while I go knock wood.

Exactly.

I am a HUGE proponent of driver training, and have benefitted from more training than I am sure anyone would care to hear about plus AX, track time, club racing, vintage racing, and LeMons racing (doesn't get much hairier than LeMons...). Learned a lot in all of it, as well as volumes in LeMons before deciding it was too, uh, wild for me and my sensibilities. I too have been very, very "lucky" on the road over the years and tend to move along invisibly (but usually quickly/efficiently) and drive extremely defensively. That said, living in San Francisco for a decade taught me to drive not aggressively (have never liked being in the car with those who do) but assertively. I want people to KNOW what I am up to, but it doesn't have to be done rudely. I see the horn as part of active safety, and don't care if I annoy someone a bit from time to time. Pretty sure I've saved the 914 (and other cars) dozens of times thanks to a hand ready on the horn BEFORE I needed to push the button when that subtle "something" told me the other driver was about to do something stupid.

But I really didn't want to get into driving resumes and talk about being a safer driver. The former usually gets ugly (though it hasn't here), the latter is obvious. Well, maybe not obvious enough..

No, the point of this thread is for that ice patch, for those idiots who dive-bomb brakes the right hand turn to a point PAST the limit line (he knows he'll stop, but you don't), etc. For the variables AFTER you've done your all as a driver. Or, AFTER you, as a smart, responsible, and safe driver have made a mistake. We are all capable of them. If we can prevent one 914worlder from adding something that could cost them dearly on their "off" day, then we'll be onto something. I'm already seeing good feedback, if nothing else then on how NOT to make our 914s more dangerous.

Now, like JP, I need to go knock on some wood.

pete

P.S. And Eric is right, it was MB that first did crush zones, thanks to the brilliance of Bela Barenyi, the father of passive safety -- and a man who has done more to save more lives than a great many advocates of worthy causes to preserve and protect human lives. Let's see if we can take his example and, in some small way, maximize the lessons our 914s learned from his ground-breaking idea.

The mistakes *I* make fall into the "lucky" category. The guy that was in my blind spot realized I was trying to kill him as I moved over. Fortunately I was not abrupt with the movement and he/she had time to react.

Hitting a patch of ice is not bad luck....it's driving beyond what the conditions allow....no different than following too close or driving in the rain....sneakier, tho.

Bad luck is a late friend who had a car land on him which had run off an elevated section of road. All the cages & airbags in the world wouldn't have helped him and his passenger.

Is the 914 unsafe to drive on the road. Yes. Is it unsafer than others? Yes. It's small and I went over small cars already. Its structure is weak......even without rust. I've spent a lot of time making mine stouter...for AX, not for crashing and it wouldn't stand a chance against a berserk Expedition.

The mass of a vehicle is equal to its weight X the square of the speed in feet per second. Do the math. All the crumple zones are useless without a seat belt....even air bags will raise hell with your glasses & the face thereunder.

Should you be paranoid while driving a 914...you're gwadamn right.

the 914s problem, its small. People seriously dont see me, and im afraid some asshole in an suv will run me over. But I actually do trust the car and its abilities, and its nimble character has some me from people cutting me off (and one person driving drunk in the wrong lane (god, that was scary head on experience))

Apart from keeping the car in good structural and mechanical condition, having good tires for the conditions you are driving in, and making sure your seat belts are fully operable, there isn't much you can do to make the car any safer.
As for making the driver safer... sometimes feeling safer has exactly the opposite effect by making you behave more dangerously.
DE can train you to handle a car at high speeds but doesn't necessarily make you any safer on the streets. At first made me think I could go faster in my car - anywhere. It wasn't until I did a little SCCA road racing that I realized just how dangerous being behind the wheel IS. We all go the same direction, are totally focused on a singular activity, and prepare our cars extensively. Fortunately most crashes (I never call them accidents) may result in destroyed equipment, but little or no injury. Seeking the limits of control in order to be ahead of the competition is a frightening affair. That's why one's adrenalin is so high during a race.
By comparison, statistics show that driving on public roads is one of the most life threatening activities americans participate in, yet we typically travel along calmly oblivious to the unexpected event just over the horizon.
Car control clinics are probably the best activity to help raise one's situational awareness in the seemingly routine environment of street driving.


... told you so!

So far, the sum I see is:

For street 914s:
-Don't add a roll bar or cage
-Porsche-engineered 3-point belts *might* be safer than aftermarket 5-point belts.
-Late 1973-on doors
-Check for rust in structure

What about:
-Seatbelt age -- and can we buy new replacements?
-Engman kit (good or bad in a crash? having just added it for other reasons, I'd think its additional strength inside the crush zones is a good thing)
-Modern, strong, ergonomic seats?

pete

OK, OK....... this puts me down for being right only 97% of the time.
It did happen at the track, thank God. Had I not been wearing a helmet I prolly couldn't type no mo.

I'm too busy to go into much detail here, but as a former collision shop owner I've seen all kinds of damage. The Engman kit or the Mayeur kit would change the crash dynamics. However in both Dr Evils car and Rockets car The damage was closer to the cowl. It's likely the damage would still have looked some what the same. The snap may have been more abrupt. I think the lower stiffening of the box is fine. Think about how we add to the longs and the lower rear firewall, but we don't add anything to the front lower foot well area. I think that's good. It gives the side impact a place to crush. I would avoid tampering too much with the front or rear crush zones. We need our street cars to absorb energy. More thoughts later. I'm going out to work on my engine.

Actually, mass is mass; kinetic energy is 1/2 mass * velocity ^2. But the point still stands.


...Rich makes some very good points, as well. I figure the Mayeur and Engman kits don't really do much either way for crashes, though, as in most cases the longitudinals are below the level of the bumper of whomever hits us.

The longs are probably weaker than they were originally designed to be, so reinforcing them probably won't strengthen them to the point where it makes things worse. But that is quite frankly a total SWAG.

I have toyed, on occasion, with the notion of having NASCAR bars built inside the door, from the hinge points to the latch. I'm not sure if the hinges and latch could take it very well in the event of a side impact, though. And I do have to wonder how strong would be "too strong". There's just not much space to the side to absorb impact.

--DD

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 ). For those of us who drive our cars on the street, the best safety upgrade is educating and preparing the . 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