Challenge car Safety - we should talk about it.

I hope we are not referring to the parkinglot buid.

In hindsight i shoud have taken TB up on his arm restraints, but i don't feel the car was inherently unsafe.

The car had a nhra legal 6 point roll cage, a 6 month old 6 point safequip harness, door bars and a oem seat mounted to the stock location. I brought a window net but did not get it installed in time and i will take responsibility for that.

Safety is very important which is why i installed the previously mentioned wheel studs. I did not want a repeat of the 2008 rx7 incident with the failure of the oem wheel bolt.

Safety first, i totally agree.

I really would prefer that this not get locked up and hidden away. We can generate useful information, procedures and a mission going forward.

Please, give each other some room to be imperfect but still accepted. I would rather not have good guys on one side vs. bad guys on the other; we can all be on the same side!

I want to blame a lot of people for doing things wrong and endangering others, but I also want to believe that none of us want to purposely hurt each other.

For a long time we have had a budget challenge procedure when we suspected a cheater. Is is feasible to have a short outline for a safety challenge when we think another entrant is unsafe (purposefully or accidentally)? Should we all have the expressed right to call halt and have a small (unaffiliated? accredited?) council make a quick ruling? A simple form on one sheet of paper that can go on record as an incident report could probably suffice? Thoughts?

I would hate to work all year on something I think was special only to be thrown out due to my ignorance of a rule (especially something arcane from the scca...). Perhaps a safety check thread monitored by a staff representative and peers?

Ideas are great. Blame is natural. The tough part is letting the past be and working on the future. I really hope those better at this than I am will give it a lot of thought and continue to do that work.

Robbie wrote: In reply to tb: Thanks. on another note - have anyone else ever tried to specifically NOT click on a thread? Very hard for an idle mind...

YES! I'm glad someone else feels this way.

In reply to pimpm3:

I watched the build pretty closely and I think that it was pretty safe (well, there WAS that fire...). There may be a few minor points to quibble over in theory but I would call if perfectly fine for autox and drag racing.

I am just a bit of a safety nut. I was before my catastrophic injury and since then I am willing to give extra effort to keep others safe if I can.

Definitely no hard feelings; my rule of thumb for open cars like yours includes nomex socks & fireproof (fia) gloves and shoes too but you are a big boy and can make your own call on that stuff.

In our short track racing AFTER A show anyone can protest the car or cars ahead of them for a more accurate and deeper Inspection. in this case prior to the show?

pimpm3 wrote: I hope we are not referring to the parkinglot buid.

Speaking only for myself, I was not. Aside from the arm restraint issue that you pointed out, it was a legit build from what I saw.

ETA:

The arm restraint question is more of a safety gear discussion and not a build discussion. I'd put that in the same topic as HANS use with a harness. It's closely related, but different.

I suggest a safety review panel or person, that when i see something i feel is unsafe or not to scca/nhra rules, i can go to them and wave the red flag and have said car stopped until they say yea or nay.

When i fear for my life as a course worker or fear for the lives of the driver and anyone nearby, including my children in the stands, when a certain car is running, someone should be able to stop things. I have 20 years of NHRA experience and having my cars teched under my belt and i feel like a more scrutinizing tech inspection should be performed. I understand tech guys see certain things and know a car is built letter of the law, i was told that while he was looking at my car, but some things that showed up had glaring red flags. One car should not have been allowed to be any more than pushed by its team, as it was more art car than anything. It was gloriously executed in the looks dept but every time it was put into gear i felt like someone could die.

GTXVette wrote: In our short track racing AFTER A show anyone can protest the car or cars ahead of them for a more accurate and deeper Inspection. in this case prior to the show?

Good Point! I think many organizations allow protests after the fact and that is great and also should be in place for results. Some people are competitive and I bet are pretty pissed off even if they are keeping it in check so far.

It would be tough on the schedule to have a parc expose first of all and many of us do not have the time to check out every other car so I am not sure if we could do an official peer review. Prior only might be tough, perhaps a safety challenge can happen at any time, by any one?

Many challengers do not trust the current system to be thorough and unbiased. We have accomplished the first step in bringing attention to the issue. I am not sure if we will get full transparency at this point but have been assured of more information forthcoming. A much more professional tech inspection is something that most seem to want and we have even had volunteers (awesome!). I think that more ideas and implementations will come up to help us design the tools that we need to keep everyone safe.

patgizz wrote: I suggest a safety review panel or person, that when i see something i feel is unsafe or not to scca/nhra rules, i can go to them and wave the red flag and have said car stopped until they say yea or nay. ...

I like this idea. It seems like there has been an attitude from some that has put a chilling effect on our willingness to go to the staff for help. A new culture that encourages anyone to call "STOP" whenever they feel the need to question anything could be the answer to a lot of problems.

Who do we all feel like we can trust to bring these issues to for immediate action on the spot?

We all know it is not a race, rather an event for a magazine but nothing about that precludes safety as a priority.

While we're on the subject I need to apologize to John who drove our car, my codriver, and you guys. When putting my exhaust back on Friday morning I only tacked up one side and the back bracket knowing that it would probably have to come back off to load up. I felt it would hold and it did through the event but it came off as I was taking it up the ramps to load up. That's too close and I was lucky it didn't come off earlier. Looking back I made a bad decision and hopefully will learn from it.

In reply to Stampie:

You, sir, are a class act all the way! It is hard to not respect someone who clearly shows such respect to others.

pimpm3 wrote: I hope we are not referring to the parkinglot buid.

Nope. Not at all! I watched everything you did, and fully expected to never see it run, and be helping pick up the pieces to put in the dumpster at the hotel. I have never been so pleasantly surprised (and thrilled to be wrong) in my life!

I want to see more cars like yours! In fact, if every car there was built to the safety standard of the parking lot build, we'd be good. (I won't tell OSHA some of the stuff you did in the build process!!) lol!

I just felt we needed proper netting and fire walls. I'm sure that is in the rules already, but some cars were missing it. The parking lot build (which I loved) needed a net. The turbo inside the car needed a berkin' fire wall. I was told about the red car, but I did not inspect it.

Aussie Steve had an exhaust system that came back past the factory fire wall. The car was modified to have a safe fire wall. I'm just saying that you should have a fire wall installed, like Steve did, before you arrive at the track. The tech people should have been thinking the same way.

In reply to spin_out:

If you want to make a list I really didn't like to see a car competing with a shattered window...

I'm disappointed no one has asked for a 150mph drag chute budget exemption.

Gasoline wrote: I'm disappointed no one has asked for a 150mph drag chute budget exemption.

Nope. If you go that fast, you have to pay for it! That is the point of this whole thing...

In reply to tb: Wait there, Les says he can make 1000 hp with stock Mitsubishe parts with cars he has it's a possibility.

GTXVette wrote: In reply to tb: Wait there, Les says he can make 1000 hp with stock Mitsubishe parts with cars he has it's a possibility.

I would love to see it! I have never seen anyone bend the laws of physics and the universe so it would be cool... providing, of course, he does it SAFELY!

I am really not too worried about Les, but I might have some friends in the vicinity and I care about them a lot.

GTXVette wrote: In reply to tb: Wait there, Les says he can make 1000 hp with stock Mitsubishe parts with cars he has it's a possibility.

Making the hp isn't the issue. Finding a transmission that will take the abuse is.

While it's been said multiple times in this thread, enforcing NHRA and/or SCCA rules has to happen with a real tech inspection for safety purposes. That's a given, bit it also has to happen to prevent controversy. I saw multiple examples where if a competitor wanted to, they could protest another car for its drag time being illegal due to lack of safety equipment, and they'd be right. That would turn the event into a mess of pissed off people.

There is another component to add: someone has to be responsible for some common sense judgements on some of these builds. Rulings should be made on things that that may not be explicitly written into SCCA or NHRA rules when it comes to safety. Some examples I saw: jagged metal near driver, 2x4's pointed at drivers chest, plexiglass firewalls, rear suspension that seems to repeadly collapse, turbos in the passenger compartment, just to name a few. All very dangerous drivers, and potentially to competitors and spectators.

I'm not looking to be a kill joy or to stifle creativity but I don't want to see someone get hurt or inadvertently hurt someone else.

In reply to Stampie: and they finished overall 2nd after cleaning everyone's clock on Concourse points, not sure how to take that. PVC rollcage, wooden stakes aimed at their Vampire driver, a drivers seat that allegedly collapsed and the craziest steering I ever saw on a race car. sigh

This thread is useless without pics.

tb wrote: In reply to spin_out: If you want to make a list I really didn't like to see a car competing with a shattered window...

Ouch! That was me. I was confident it wasn't going anywhere, but was fully prepared to remove it if tech had a problem with it.

bigben wrote:

tb wrote: In reply to spin_out: If you want to make a list I really didn't like to see a car competing with a shattered window...

Ouch! That was me. I was confident it wasn't going anywhere, but was fully prepared to remove it if tech had a problem with it.

I'm sorry. I am really not here to call people out individually and I stepped out of line. I apologize for being rude and inconsiderate and will try to behave better in the future.

I also wholeheartedly believe that you were trying to do your best when dealt with a bad situation. It would be very hard to behave differently in your shoes and it was not up to you to take yourself out of competition until a remedy could be established.

Also, it was a really awesome car! I liked it! It couldn't have been easy to blend classic beauty with a modern power plant swap and I hope the magazine shares your story with us in detail.

I promise work on keeping my emotions in check and to not be mean. I think that the real issue isn't with just one or two people who made questionable choices but perhaps with the culture of freewheeling allowances and looking away in the name of profit. I wish I had an answer and could be instantly right; since I do not I will try to work towards one and away from acting wrongly.

Cotton wrote: This thread is useless without pics.

I didn't take any, and I am not sure that it is yet the time to share them and invite specific commentary.

I know being vague sucks but it also suck to start throwing people under the bus in an internet witch hunt out for blood.

You are correct; pics would help a whole lot! Personally I was just too busy working on my own POS and I promise I am not hiding anything from the group.