First car iv owned thats not a ford

[Chris_C]

My understanding is if the car flips, theres no way other than squishing your head, you shouldn't be able to submarine with the harnesses. A recliner of any sort will break the seat back, so your head will be a bit less squished. Cage obviously makes the squishing less likely.

[Jason B]

In a road car, the seat can be broken in two, as chris says, and also the seatbelt allows a large degree of movement. So in the very unlucky event of rolling the car then you have a better chance of avoiding the roof as it comes in towards your head! A "proper" (and by this I mean FIA spec or better) set of bucket seats and harnesses will allow no movement and keep you firmly planted into the seat, so if the roof comes in then you can't avoid it. The bucket seats will not snap in half like normal seats because in motorsport use they'd never have to. With a properly fitted cage, the roof should stay suitably far from the driver and passenger to avoid any of these kind of injuries.

Plenty of people will say different, about how harnesses are safer in most situations than seat belts, but at the end of the day two things are proven... standard oem setups are in most cases very good, and full motorsport setups are exceptionally good. Anything inbetween is more of a risk.

[sven360]

Is your surname Burke, your dad's called Michael and you live at house number 999 by any chance??????

If not you should-very well put across piece there J


Meanwhile back on the M40......................

[filthyjohn]

I've seen a lot of crashed and rolled cars in scrappies, and NEVER have I seen a seat which had broken in two. Plenty that were bent out of shape, seat backs folded in half etc, but none actually broken. They're made of steel lets remember. IMO, a 3/4point harness will restrict your 'submarining' movements no more than a 3pt inertia reel belt. Is this why 5+6 point belts are not road legal?
If a bucket seat is so strong that it won't deflect when the roof hits it, then it would be strong enough to act as additional roof strength!
I remember a few years back, an audi TT driver was decapitated going off the A19 all by himself, no other cars involved. He flipped over and landed roof-first on some smallish trees. A friend of a friend attended the aftermath, and there was no mention of the seat allowing him to avoid the incoming roof. Plenty of mentions of grisly details which I'd rather not repeat though
Don't get me wrong, I can see there's a possibility of a grain of truth in the whole "held in place by bucket seat while killed by roof" theory. But I'll reserve judgment until it's backed up by crash testing, real world crash reports, or some form of research. Possible dissertation/PHD for someone?

[Chris_C]

Don't forget a lot of buckets, esp non FIA are lower than the top of your head FJ

[filthyjohn]

So are a lot of standard seats though. I just don't really see the distinction. Yes some buckets are stronger, but stock seats aren't gonna fragment out of the way like those polystyrene corner markers in BTCC, nor would it necessarily be a good thing if they did move dramatically. For me, the argument about seat strength/flexibility is a non-starter. By the time the roof tests the strength of ANY seat, it'll have already been through your head on the way there.
The issue is whether 3point inertia reel belts allow you to escape downwards away from the roof, in the event that you roll over with enough vigour to deform it.

[Bazboy]

Hmmm seems like one of those subjects, would it be safer if you had buckets with normal seat belts?

Dan

[filthyjohn]

^^^ Can't see a problem there Dan, lots of cars have racy buckety seats which are type-approved/NCAP'd.

[Jason B]

a guy in our motorclub rolled his bmw and got smacked in the head by the roof sufficiently hard to knock him out... it came down a very very long way! - I don't really have a proper opinion on it either, it just seems to me that you should either run all or nothing with regard to harnesses and cages...

with regards to harness legality, technically mine aren't road legal but they are absolutely top-spec (in-date)FIA harnesses (due to the aircraft style buckles not being e-marked) and at the mot the guy said that what would be the point in failing them just to force me to come back with some regular belts that are much worse.

edit: on the subject of buckets with normal seat belts, will be ok as long as the seat belt still fits you ok, i.e. there is not distance between you and the lap or shoulder belt due to the fact that proper buckets have sides to them. Otherwise you'd travel much further forward before the inertia reel kicks in to stop you.

[Bazboy]

Ok that sounds cool, im not planning buckets yet, but it is on my list, what i really want is a set of recaros or something like that, but they arent cheap lol

Cheers for the info guys,

Dan

[filthyjohn]

Yeah car roofs (rooves?) can come in a long way. I'd like to see some crash testing, wonder if fifth gear would take it on.

[classicswede]

Have any of you actualy tried to squash the roof down of a 300? It takes one hell of a lot of doing. One corner will support the weight of a JCB!

[volvosneverdie]

Have any of you actualy tried to squash the roof down of a 300? It takes one hell of a lot of doing. One corner will support the weight of a JCB!

Hmmmmm.

*looks at JCB*

*looks at car roof height loading bay*

*looks at 340 parked underneath loading bay*

NO.

No Dai.

I think Im just going to take your word for it.

[Jason B]

Have any of you actualy tried to squash the roof down of a 300? It takes one hell of a lot of doing. One corner will support the weight of a JCB!

totally different thing, you are loading the roof statically... the impulsive force on the roof from flipping a car will be much higher than you think (and thats not even accounting for the possibility of hitting something and weakening the shell before you actually roll) - case in point, you can't put a nail into a piece of wood by just balancing the hammer on it....

[sven360]

I'm with Jason Burke on this-he's got a big brain