johnz

Extremely well written Todd. I too have participated in many open track days and am racing now. I feel fortunate that I've never had a serious incident. I have seen in car video of a friends accident during a race, hitting a barrier at 80 mph and rolling. You can see how the HANS device kept his head from moving. He walked away. As an instructor I have seen people spend thousands of dollars to make their car faster and handle better but then say they can't afford a safety device that could save their lives.

Todd/A.W.E.

Here are three:

<a href="http://www.isaacdirect.com">Isaac</a>
<a href="http://hansdevice.com/s.nl/sc.2/category.2/.f">
HANS</a>

<a href="http://www.lfttech.com/index.php">R3</a>

Given that the HANS device cannot be used with 3 point seatbelts and students that I instruct sometimes have 3 point belts, I am going to be purchasing an R3.

DWP

Amen to that!

April

Very true. Even staying in bed has it's hazards ;-)

mirth

not second-guessing -- but bmwcca usually doesn't allow soloing in the bottom two rungroups.

OCDboy

Thanks again for your post.

LIRS6

observations - I have done Skip Barber and lapping days with nary a thought about a neck brace/other safety equipment. Consequences in "normal" traffic accidents should give us an insight into the potential severity of a crash at lap speeds.

LCP

...I don't think taking street cars to race tracks designed for racing with little safe runoff areas is safe. I ran the 2.3 mile infield/oval roadcourse configuration at Texas Motor Speedway one time, and given the extensive use of the oval track and the high presence of concrete walls, it's not a place I'd run in a street car again.

Maybe where drivers ed events are held should be looked at a little more closely. Off-track excursions will happen, and a track can be designed (and some are being designed) to accomodate this with very minimal risk to the vehicle and its occupants. Those are where drivers ed events should happen. If you want to go to the tracks where the risk of crashing is high or the consequences of crashing is high, then maybe you should have to get a race car with safety equipment to do it. Or if you take your streetcar to such a place, you shouldn't be going more than about 8/10ths anywhere on the track, no matter how much experience you have. That takes discipline though, and few have it, especially once the drive to keep going faster kicks in.

My $0.02.