Safety progress in S2000 compared to WRC?

[Rallyper]

Well, guys, last weekend we had an serious accident in Bulgaria when a co-driver was killed. The car was actually a S2000 car and my concern is how the safety is developing in the S2000-class.

We know that in the WRC cars the manufacturers and FIA have made big progress, with sideimpact protection, and many other actions has been taken to make the cars safer. Will that be heritaged to the new WRC-cars in 2011?

I know many of you out there has much better knowledge about these things. Please let us now. Because I´m a bit frightened about the safety in the new wrc-class of 2011.... :(

[Barreis]

Molibdone rollbars are trash. Second peugeot that killed somebody.. Remember how lucky was Mills in Germany and how molibdone rollbar trashed away.. Look what Latvala can do with focus (xd) and nothing.. I remember how Kremer hit tree with focus in Germany 2002 and nothing.. That's it..

[Mirek]

Barreis: Sorry, but I think You don't have some kind of mechanical engineering aducation, don't You? Otherwise You wouldn't write something like this. Rolling anywhere anyhow is quite safe way to crash and is not comparable to crash into solid obstacle.

Rallyper: The most important safety factor in rallying is speed and mass. S2000 is slower than WRC, has much lower top speed and is lighter. All of these are reasonable plus factors for safety.

Well they don't have latest seats used by factory WRC teams and polymer side-impact energy absorbers but all of this may be very easyly fit and I'm sure it will be fit once they will be used as new WRC.

The rollcage has the same homologation procedure as WRC. Sometimes people mention that S2000 are smaller than WRC and therefore has smaller deformation zones. That's partly true, partly not. They are smaller than C4 or Focus but bigger than 206 WRC or Fabia WRC (not all of them).

Fatal accidents just happen when the circumstances are exceptionally bad and especialy in this case it would be fatal in any car. Hi-speed side-roof impact is practicaly the worst possible case and there is no safety feature which could safe Fabio's life.

[Barreis]

I really don't have mechanical engineering education but I have experience and also saw so many rollbars alive.. Also rolled and had 16 accidents (unfortunately)..

[Mirek]

Well, I believe You that You have big experience but there are some facts comming from physical laws which stand. So if You roll (Latvala) there is not much kinetic energy which the rollbar must absorb because the car doesn't stop but continue moving. But if You crash at same speed into something solid and such bad way that the car stops immediately, all the kinetic energy is spent to deformation and it's way much worse than any kind of rolling.

Also the decceleration which is very dangerous for human body is rather small while rolling but extreemly high in sudden stop.

Every km/h, every degree of impact angle changes situation dramaticaly and real-life crashes are each one too specific to compare and there are too little number of them, therefore they can't be evaluated by statistic methods as road crashes are.

[Barreis]

I agree.. But You should see ford rollbars once again..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ageubuCcgI

[J4MIE]

Agree with Mirek, when you hit a tree or a rock at speed then it's the worst thing to happen.

Regarding the Kremer accident there, I can't see that he hit something solid and stopped suddenly :confused: He spins around which will dissipate a lot fo the energy in the crash. From the video I saw of the car in Bulgaria it was a big impact into a tree sadly :(

[Rallyper]

Yeah. most of us here at the forum knows the differences between pure rolls or sideimpacts.

My question is still maybe not answered: what can we wait to see about the development in security for the S2000 as a world rally car?

The speed will be there, even though it´s alighter car.

Anyone? :confused:

[Barreis]

Hm, what would say Park or Flavio?

[Lousada]

On another forum, Bulgarians who were at the stage say that Lavios rollcage snapped near the welds.

I would not say this is only with Peugeots. Chris Atkinson managed to rip open a Subaru, but lucky for him at the rear.

[J4MIE]

Roll cages should not just snap, I do hope that it wasn't a poorly prepared car in Bulgaria, but scrutineers must have checked it before the start of the event.

Are S2000s built by the manufacturer, then just run by a team, or can anyone build one?

[Barreis]

Peugeot Sport is delivering prepared S2000 bodyshell..

[Mirek]

Roll cages should not just snap, I do hope that it wasn't a poorly prepared car in Bulgaria, but scrutineers must have checked it before the start of the event.

Are S2000s built by the manufacturer, then just run by a team, or can anyone build one?

All S1600, S2000 and WRC rollcages must be homologated by FIA and they must be both developped and built by authorized company and attached by serial number. They are already welded into bodyshell by the manufacturer even if You buy the car as a Kit.

[J4MIE]

Ok, well I'm sure that Peugeot will be investigating this to find out what happened and the best way to avoid it happening again. Pretty sure this would be standard practice with any major accident (I know Subaru has done this before with a privateer accident).

[Barreis]

Roll down.. Today is Flavio's funeral..
http://desno4.forumfree.net/?t=34722334&st=105

[bt52b]

Christian Loriaux was quoted in Motorsport News or Autosport not long ago expressing concern about the purposed rules about what safety modifications are allowed in S2000 and the new WRC rules. He didn't think you are allowed to build S2000/new WRC to a be as safe as current WRC cars.

Focus WRC 2009 has an additional beam in the sill, which probably saved GiGi and Patrick Pivato, and no doubt JML is glad of it too.

Its very had to find info about the current WRC safety upgrade and is also even harder to find a timetable of the roll out of the these safety upgrades to S2000/GpN etc.

On the FIA Institute (http://www.fiainstitute.com/media-centre/Pages/insafety.aspx) InSafety magazine Issue 04 (p 37) there are pictures of a crash test, of a 205 fitted with a 'WRC Safety Package' and it survived a 60km/h tree side impact. Thats progress but they need to get that crash test speed doubled...

There doesn't seem to be an urgency in the FIA's plans to roll out better safety to Rally / Saloon cars. Compare that to what happened in F1 in 2005.

Just remembered that the new seat (FIA 8862) is mandatory in the WRC cars but not in IRC etc... older seats are alot weaker.

For over five years cars in the DTM have had the drivers seat more central and moved back a bit. NASCAR have been doing the same for a couple of years. So have V8 Supercars too. Rallying hasn't really started to do this. With the samller cars like the Fiesta, rather than a Focus, you don't have as much freedom too build in 'safety gap' for side impacts. For this reason the new WRC should still use 4m cars like the Focus and the C4, not the Fiesta or C3.

In the Autumn seven Subaru Imprezza's (http://www.fiainstitute.com/news/Pages/article-40.aspx) will be crashed tested by Prodrive and the FIA Institute, to try and develop a new spec for rollcages.

[Mirek]

There is no reason why FACTORY S2000-WRC should not use the same safety features the FACTORY WRC use. Older WRC also don't have factory safety standard and noone rebuilts them to factory team standard.

And about the dimmensions... I already mentioned that before. Punto or 207 have 4030 mm in stock version. 206 has 3835 mm. It was longer than 4 meters just because big bumpers which have no influence on safety. All S2000 bodyshells are both longer and wider than that from peugeot 206 WRC. Fabia WRC had also shorter bodyshell than 4000 mm and had big bumpers to be bigger not to be safer...

[Daniel]

At the end of the day if you have a big enough accident you're going to die. You can't look at this video and tell me WRCars are immune from big damage to their cages as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRVshT38kyo

[HaCo]

Speed is an important factor too in safety. E = m x v², where v is speed and m is mass. E is the energy of a certain mass with a certain speed which it needs to loose during the impact. So having cars that accelerate slower from the corners and have lower top speed and make them lighter as well will make the current roll cages more effective. Having bigger, and thus heavier cars makes the impact heavier.

[jonkka]

Having bigger, and thus heavier cars makes the impact heavier.

Mass affects car's kinetic energy, making heavier car more dangerous to those outside it.

For the crew safety, mass of the car has no direct effect. In the simple scenarion, mass of the car does not change during deceleration and it is shedding only the velocity component of car's kinetic energy. In broader sense however, heavier car can be made safer by sturdier safety features. Of course, this depends on rules, for example the increased minimum weight for the body shell was a step in right direction in this sense.

Also, heavier car has slower acceleration (though it conversely has slower deceleration), indirectly affecting passive safety.

[Daniel]

Mass affects car's kinetic energy, making heavier car more dangerous to those outside it.

For the crew safety, mass of the car has no direct effect. In the simple scenarion, mass of the car does not change during deceleration and it is shedding only the velocity component of car's kinetic energy. In broader sense however, heavier car can be made safer by sturdier safety features. Of course, this depends on rules, for example the increased minimum weight for the body shell was a step in right direction in this sense.

Also, heavier car has slower acceleration (though it conversely has slower deceleration), indirectly affecting passive safety.
Agreed. It can work both ways. Lighter cars are easies to stop etc etc but a heavier car may for instance break down a smaller tree rather than wrapping itself around it

[Mirek]

Mass affects car's kinetic energy, making heavier car more dangerous to those outside it.

Not exactly. If You hit anything solid You can't break by Your car (as Daniel says), than more weight with same rollcage is definitely dissadvantage because in the same impact You need to absorb more energy. You can do that only by bigger deformation or by bigger rebound or both. In any case it's always worse.

Simply You have car 1 with 1000 kg and car 2 with 1230 kg. Both are going 100 km/h and crashing straight into a wall or a big tree the way they can rebound only in opposite direction of original movement (no spinning around, rolling etc.). Both have same rollcage in this example because there is no rulle which says the heavier car must have stiffer rollcage existing.

Car 1 has kinetic energy 386 MJ.
Car 2 has kinetic energy 475 MJ.

The difference says how much more the second car will suffer from the crash.

For side tree impact there is also reasonable importance of car lenght. While in frontal crash more lenght is usualy better (more possible deformation), in side impact into the tree it may be often opposite. The longer the car, the bigger moment of innertia of the body which bents the car over the tree.