An interesting analysis of crashes

[Tony Clifton]

After this weekends crash by Katehrine Legge, I am convinced of one thing; the angle of impact is what saved her life. Legge hit on an angle, rear wheel first.

Head over to www.youtube.com

do a word search and watch the following crashes. Each crash is different but for many the result was the same. Death. Also note as time has gone on how much the materials the cars are fabricated and track design has changed driver and spectator safety, all for the better.

Crashes to search for and my comments:

Swede Savage, died due to injuries to his lungs NOT the trauma from the crash. Perhaps better fuel cell technology would have prevented fuel leakage and fire, preventing inhalation injuries.

Tom Pryce, multiple hazards here. Teenage track marshall with no experience crossed track with fire extinguisher, Pryce loses life due to impact of fire extinguisher on his head. Better yellow flags, banning drivers and track marshall from crossing a hot track (think Bourdais at Denver this year). All would have prevented these deaths.

Gordon Smiley, very interesting crash. Smiley got loose heading into Indy turn 3, car got loose, Smiley corrects, car hooks and heads DIRECTLY into the 3rd turn wall. Smiley hits wall at about 200 mph straight on. In this case in 1982 the cars were made of aluminum honeycomb. Could a SAFER barrier, HANS and a much stronger carbon fiber chassis have saved Smileys life? In my opinion, yes.

Take a look at the Nelson Piquet crash directly after Smileys crash. Piquet hits the wall directly on at 200 MPH, but the crash vector is different. Piquet suffers severe leg injuries, but the energy of the crash is dissipated over a much longer time frame.

Aryton Senna, car hits right front, suspension breaks and pierces his visor. If the driver side walls were higher and there were more tires, this death could have been avoided. Even if driver cockpit walls were not higher BUT more tires were present, Senna probably would have lived.

Gilles Villeneuve. This death was a pure materials failure. In my opinion, after viewing the crash the major part that broke on the car was the driver cockpit resulting in Villeneuve being thrown from the car into the catch fence, killing him. Only better chassis materials and design could have saved him.
Also take a look at the Japan GP of 1977, cars leave the track hitting spectators. Tracks today have a much further setback for spectator safety.

Greg Moore. The only things that would have saved Moore was paving the inside of the oval so that the car would not have flipped as it headed toward the wall. Additional tires in that area could help with a head on collision.

Jeff Krosnoff. Good materials for car fabrication, just a track that did not have a catch fence to keep the car off the tree and the track marshall (Gary Avrin) AWAY from flying debris. That area of the track has been significantly improved since 1996.

Katherine Legge. One lucky driver. Angle saved her. Road America suffers from the same design flaw that Imola does, a blindingly fast corner with inadequate run off space. Legge was lucky. RA needs significantly more tires along that area or possibly a SAFER barrier.

I hope as time goes on that track and chassis designers, safety officials and race organizers will strive to improve driver safety. It is very interesting to be able to view these crashes and truly see how much safety has improved.

[StuiE]

I actually was looking at some of these yesterday, Tom Pryce, Gordon Smiley, Nelson Piquet and Lorenzo Bandini, had seen most of the others a few days before, first time I had seen the Moore crash too, I missed that race. The worst in terms of grusomeness (is that a word?) would be Tom Pryce, it's quite sickening, the comments seem to think the italians added a 'thud' to the sound too...

Legge is defenitly very lucky, even with that angle, in an '80s car she probably wouldn't be here.


also, YouTube and Wikipedia are great...I've been spending way too much time there lately.

[Chatters]

I have seen a dew of those videos, some I'm not so sure I'd like to see, but yes, Legge is definately lucky to be alive today. That corner is very dangerous and to be honest I'm surprised no-one has noticed that, or done anything about it.

Have there been any other serious accidents at that corner before?

[flexible-flyer]

nice insight but i think things can be over analysed though. i think in all of those crashes, one minor difference would have either saved or doomed the people involved. every crash is different, no matter how similar they are.

from what i recall, a few laps before greg moore was killed, another driver went off at more or less the same place but he missed the paving and hit a different wall. but even if he went off at exactly the same place, and even at exactly the same speed, and furthermore made exactly the same driver controls that greg did, he sill might have walked away.

a few months after gilles crashed, pironi had what people say was an eerily similer accident at hockenheim, but despite the cars breaking up like gilles, he stayed in his seat.

what if krosnoff was launched a few meteres further down the road? he might have missed the marshall and the post and still be racing today. catch fencing can be your savior one day and your killer the next. what about poor tony renna?

its like casual sex. you can make it safer and safer but aslong as 2 vital components are there, there will always be danger. kat could have hit the wall at exactly the same place and angle and speed and not walked away owing to some of the most random things!

[dubby99]

Come to think about it if this was a crash that happened back in say the 99 season that exactly mirrored Kathrine crash i don't think the driver would have walked away so easily.

I say that beacause the current CC is about 4 seconds of the pace they were setting back then and most of that is due to the top end speed of the car not having as much power, 750 compared to the 950+ hp they once had.

Not taking anything away from today's Champcar but it is far safer due to the power decrease and i believe that at a track like road america this played a vital part in Kats escape from danger.

[Tony Clifton]

Good point. Did not think of that.

If we take qualifying from year 2000 (when the chassis has not changed from) Dario Franchitti qualified at 1:39.866 (145.924 MPH).

Year 2004
Bourdais qualified at 1:43.046 (141.420 mph)

Year 2006 (there was rain so we use fastest practice)
Bourdais ran a 1:42.92 (141 + MPH) lap

Although the series has better tires now the engine power is greatly reduced. If that crash happened in 1999 or 2000 with no HANS device and further cockpit protection and greater speeds the result could have been fatal.

[davemk7]

a very interesting insite, to be honest though I think a lot of is owed to luck more. There can be no doubt that the measures taken by the organisers have made things safer though.
Using the safer barrier sounds like a good idea for somewhere like the kink to me, but how well would it work on a race track. In other words if the impact is slower would it have the same effect in reducing injurys?

[Phoenix1]

Originally Posted by dubby99

Come to think about it if this was a crash that happened back in say the 99 season that exactly mirrored Kathrine crash i don't think the driver would have walked away so easily.

I say that beacause the current CC is about 4 seconds of the pace they were setting back then and most of that is due to the top end speed of the car not having as much power, 750 compared to the 950+ hp they once had.

Not taking anything away from today's Champcar but it is far safer due to the power decrease and i believe that at a track like road america this played a vital part in Kats escape from danger.

When I saw it with the flipping and car ripping apart reminded me of Fontana 1999 and Greg Moore. But even so I really hope the kink stays. Motorsport is not safe and not should it be. I'm all for HANS devices but not for mickey mouse circuits. (Not want to deviate into that except if a new thread it started mind.)

[luke]

In 1994 someone had a 360 spin just after that turn on the stretch at say 190 MPH. No one collided, no damage, a full recovery. In Motor sport you can have serious accidents every now and then in the safest of places. You shouldn't have to build a huge run off on either side of a straight just incase a high speed blow out of a puncture happens. The same applies to a mechanical failure.

[Robin_D]

Tom Pryce's accident is sickening, as a marshal myself I guess this is the reason we don't cross and I wouldn't dream of it.

Also another to look at is Roger Williamson's crash at Zandvoort in 1973. Take alook.

[marcus]

the 1994 spin I think from memory was Christian Danner

[dubby99]

I still leave a question mark on how Gordan Smiley lost control of his car. It was a driving error on the second phase of the slide where Gordan over corrected and headed strait for the wall, but it's the inital slide right at the entry to the mid part of the corner and how the car just steped out leaves me to think that it could of been a slow puncture or a shock faliure which caused the inital slide, or maybe it was a driving error.

That accident was a mess and when i saw it for the first time i never new an accindet could turn out to be so bad, I really felt so sorry for him and his family i hate to imagine what it fell like to even know Gordan Smiley as a friend and see his crash.

[rustyfan]

Originally Posted by flexible-flyer

from what i recall, a few laps before greg moore was killed, another driver went off at more or less the same place but he missed the paving and hit a different wall. but even if he went off at exactly the same place, and even at exactly the same speed, and furthermore made exactly the same driver controls that greg did, he sill might have walked away.

It was Richie Hearn who went off at roughly the same place as Moore.

The main difference was, IIRC (been a while since I've seen the video now), that he went over the access road with the car going forwards, rather than sideways. I believe he wasn't going quite as fast as Moore did either.

Originally Posted by Tony Clifton

After this weekends crash by Katehrine Legge, I am convinced of one thing; the angle of impact is what saved her life. Legge hit on an angle, rear wheel first.

She actually hit the wall with the right front first rather than the right rear, but other than that I agree with your analysis on Legge's crash and the others.

[Jordi]

There's no question in my mind that the main thing that saved Katherine was hitting the wall with the side of the car, wheels and sidepod absorbing much of the energy. The fact that she flipped and that the engine went its own way made the crash very spectacular, but in that situation, if the car has withstood the first impact, the driver only has to be lucky to not hit anything blunt with the head while rolling.

Of all defined crashes in the first post, there was always something that determined the injuries or fatal outcome. One by one, they have been corrected:

-Swede Savage: Fuel cells are almost bullet-safe nowadays.
-Tom Pryce: Better marshalling standards present in all areas of motorsport.
-Gordon Smiley/Nelson Piquet: Carbon fibre chassis, HANS device, SAFER barrier. However Junqueira suffered injuries last year at Indy in a somewhat similar crash.
-Ayrton Senna: Suspensions designed not to bend towards driver/stronger cockpits prevention puncturing.
-Gilles Villeneuve/Didier Pironi: Stronger carbon fibre chassis.
-Greg Moore: Asphalted run-off areas.
-Jeff Krosnoff: Posts in street tracks - the only point perhaps not covered.

With this, I want to say that unless Katherine had been extremely unlucky (ie. had been hit on the head by something), 2006 cars are indeed this safe. There will always be an element of luck involved in crashes, as you can't plan how a car will react upon hitting a wall, whether it'll stay on the ground or fly, how parts will be scattered, etc. But I want to say that the cars are very safe as they are.

I think it's a good time to test the SAFER barrier at the Kink. There was also a new barrier debuted at Monza for the F1 race, should RA look at it maybe too?

[Bob Riebe]

Originally Posted by flexible-flyer

nice insight but i think things can be over analysed though. i think in all of those crashes, one minor difference would have either saved or doomed the people involved. every crash is different, no matter how similar they are.

from what i recall, a few laps before greg moore was killed, another driver went off at more or less the same place but he missed the paving and hit a different wall. but even if he went off at exactly the same place, and even at exactly the same speed, and furthermore made exactly the same driver controls that greg did, he sill might have walked away.

a few months after gilles crashed, pironi had what people say was an eerily similer accident at hockenheim, but despite the cars breaking up like gilles, he stayed in his seat.

what if krosnoff was launched a few meteres further down the road? he might have missed the marshall and the post and still be racing today. catch fencing can be your savior one day and your killer the next. what about poor tony renna?

its like casual sex. you can make it safer and safer but aslong as 2 vital components are there, there will always be danger. kat could have hit the wall at exactly the same place and angle and speed and not walked away owing to some of the most random things!

BRAVO, BRAVO

Thiis is the truth damned few in todays society want to accept, to paraphrase a movie, they cannot handle the truth.

The simple fact is, when any one's time is up, there is not one thing that can be done about it, EXCEPT, with man playing God, man can trap them in a hospital, attached to a machine, to extend their suffering, but man's dogma has never made sense.
Bob

[blueflagger]

Originally Posted by Chatters

Have there been any other serious accidents at that corner before?

Yes I have witnessed some of them. But it would still be difficult to compare because every few years something comes along that changes the way a car behaves in a spin or a crash. For instance, 20 years ago, the cars weren't designed to fall apart (thereby dispersing the energy involved) but 20 years ago, there was only armco as barrier and the track surface was a different pavement. Even 10 years ago, the differences would have made for a different crash.

Plus, none of the crashes that I know have happened there, happened for the same reason as Kat's. Different car behavior creates a different crash.

[rustyfan]

Didn't an IMSA car end up in the trees at the kink in the early 90's?

I know there's a crash from the 80's(?) that is shown on one of those And They Walked Away-tapes, where a red car goes up into the trees, but that's not the one I'm thinking about. The crash I'm thinking about happened during practice/warm-up and wasn't caught on tape. The aftermath was shown on the IMSA season review from that year.

[blueflagger]

The tree crash happened at Turn 6. The driver climbed down the tree, I kid you not.

I'm not sure which crash you are referring to as there used to be a number of oops events there during IMSA. We had a nasty 3-car affair where two of them ended up partially on top of armco. It was during a race, but the cameras didn't catch it because it was live feed only and they weren't the leaders. All drivers were okay but one never raced again.

[rustyfan]

I'll see if I can find the DVD with that IMSA review later today after work. Might not even have been at the kink, but I'm pretty sure that it was at Road America and that the car ended up among the trees (the driver thankfully escaped unhurt though).

[norman-normal]

Bob riebe, your last paragraph is mans "dogma", nothing to do with fact, not all share your religious beliefs.

[Bob Riebe]

Originally Posted by norman-normal

Bob riebe, your last paragraph is mans "dogma", nothing to do with fact, not all share your religious beliefs.

DOGMA is a principle, tenet or creed.
You and todays narrow minded, barely literate, society knee-jerk it asautomatically religious, but is is not, and never has been.

It can be applied to that priciple, but only a presumptive predjuice does that automatically.

The statement "man playing God" (when athethists make this statement they often capitalize the word,) it is not a religious tenet, it is a fact of life.
If it bothers you that I capitalized it, life sucks.

Bob

[luke]

Originally Posted by Bob Riebe

DOGMA is a principle, tenet or creed.
You and todays narrow minded, barely literate, society knee-jerk it asautomatically religious, but is is not, and never has been.

It can be applied to that priciple, but only a presumptive predjuice does that automatically.

The statement "man playing God" (when athethists make this statement they often capitalize the word,) it is not a religious tenet, it is a fact of life.
If it bothers you that I capitalized it, life sucks.

Bob

There's no fact there.

[blueflagger]

and it's way off topic.

[norman-normal]

Amen!

[Bob Riebe]

Originally Posted by luke

There's no fact there.

In your mind, and it as related to reality, as any other post here.
I made that one post, cheering flexi-flyer for honest truth and stopped, you are the one who had a coniption.
End.
Bob