Totally OT BBC PC rant.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Total cobblers. It all depends on what distance it decelrates over.

Reductio ad absurdium, if I slam on the brakes and take 60 meters to do it and bring the car to a halt with bumpers touching, I wont even have more than an accelerated heartbeat.

If it happens over the space of an inch, I wont even get as far as addenbrookes.

Now teh point at which internal damage starts to happen as shown in the early NASA rocket sled tests, is around 100-200g, when you start to see black eyes from the eyeballs hitting the eyelids.

Massa hit at least ten feet of tyres, which provide a pretty decent smooth deceleration, and the front couple of feet of the car got pretty badly buggered, but even if we say take 8ft, and 50g,

so using basic equations., speed at which that could be hit squared is 2 x distance (8ft) , times acceleration (50x32fps^2) = 113 feet per second, or around 77mph. Or 150mph with 200g allowable.

Compare that with the chunk of metal hitting his helmet and acting over at best 4-6 INCHES and you will see why the final impact is almost completely irrelevant. I estimate the acceleration of that chunk of metal to be around 1500g.Now depending on the mass of his head to the mass of metal. its a moot point as to how much his head suffered, but locally, I'd say that's a reasonable figure for the injuries sustained.

But then.maths isn't your strongest point is it?

Rubbish. he was clearly unconscious from the moment the spring hit.

150g wont knock you sideways for more than a moment.

Oh dear. None of that makes any sense. Not even as english.

They are also

- not scientists, they are racing drivers

- subject to te same PeeCee crap that everyone else is.

So what do you think can cope with something that is demonstrably fully capable of slicing through a carbon fibre helmet?

[The Natural Philosopher]

On the contrary, they didn't come UP with that headline until te next day..

It wasn't anyone's fault. maybe someone somewhere didn't notice a cracked bolt go through ..maybe he whacked the car across the kerbs once to often..maybe the bolt and been over tightened and was already crystalline..who knows?

I am a great believer in that 99% of accidents are avoidable. This was the exception - the 0.01% - that proves the rule.

I challenge you to find in the annals of motorsport another occasion in which someone has been damaged by a bit of metal falling off someone else's car. Wheels yes, that's killed half a dozen to my uncertain memory many marshals., but a random bolt or nut? No.

Its also absolutely a one in a million. The thing was bouncing..most metal parts dont bounce: They end up at road level, or, if they get run over., flung way off the track. Wheels bounce, and that's the great danger. Metal bits don't much..except this one being a spring, did.

My friend who was hit by a brake drum, had it thrown up by a lorry coming *in the other direction*. Or maybe it was dropped from a footbridge. Both possibilities are consistent with her last memory, of a truck passing and going under a bridge..and something coming at her.

By the way. even completely unconscious as far as she knows she managed to bring the car to a halt in a reasonably safe manner. Odd aint it?

My beef is that this unusually, was the one in a million freak accident that defines what an accident really is.

BUT it was reported under the category 'yet another motoring safety issue'

Its simply the mindset of the Beeb, and others. Anything that happens is a need for yet more legislation, angst and general navel gazing. This wasn't. This was pure bad luck.

[Fevric J. Glandules]

I've seen film of a TV cameraman being hit by a flying engine.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yess..I remember that one too vaguely.

[Jon Green]

If you're going to get into ad hominem stuff, then try to post in good English, rather than a badly-spelt, badly-punctuated inchoate stream of consciousness -- because my math is vastly, vastly better than your written English.

Since this has degenerated into ad hominem, I'm not going to continue this discussion, even though you make good points elsewhere.

I'll just rebut this:

I think you mean, "English." It's a proper noun, and carries an initial capital letter. Oh, and whilst we're on the subject, "Not even as english," even disregarding the capitalisation, is a sentence fragment, not a sentence. Anywhere else, that wouldn't matter (netnews postings tend to be colloquial in nature) but when you're criticising someone else's English (natch), at least try to use it correctly yourself. And* you're in no position to complain...unless you want me to deconstruct your recent postings for language. I don't think you do, but I'd have great fun doing it.

The "grocer's apostrophe" -- which anyone who's ready my cam.misc postings over any period of time will know I simply don't do -- was a typo left over from a re-edited sentence that originally read, "[...] Massa's brain's playing trampoline [...]", before I recast it into the past tense.

Jon (*) Yes, I know, I'm starting a sentence with a conjunction. Sue me.

[Jon Green]

Bollocks! There's always something that trips you up when you post a critique like that!

s/ready/read/

Aye-thenk-yew.

Jon

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh, I thionk thats wrong.. pretty sure a marshal was killed at brands hatch by a wheel..look at where they crouch these days, right behind the barriers..

Very much so. The things that have been done as the result of repeated fatal accidents are

- roll cages and bars

- making the nose longer than the drivers feet by a fair way, and making it crushable

- MUCH better crash helmets

- absolutely almost rigid safety harnesses

- fire proof underwear.

- continued research into runoff areas and crash barriers.

Wish half of these things were available in road cars.

This hugely long link provides fascinating reading

the basic facts are that 35g is barely a cause for any injury at all, if the body is well strapped down and the duration is not too long. The limits there are 0.2s That's long enough to come from 150mph to a dead halt at 35g.

In a mere 22 feet.

At 70g..the point at which some sort of problems will be encountered, that's a mere 11 feet. in 0.1s.

We know that drivers occasionally crash head on into tyre walls at those sorts of speeds and come to a halt in those sort of distances and seldom have more than very mild concussion, if that.

I found an interesting study where olympic boxers punched a transducer loaded dummy in the face. Peak acceleration was 58g.. so knockout concussion is somewhere in that sort of range. Bearing in mind that a boxer aims to get rotation as well as a straight nose smashing blow. That computes well with a typical F1 accident going in straight at

100mph plus. Mild concussion and a few seconds before the driver is able to get out.

This all works because the barriers are impact absorbing, and the drivers are tightly bound to the car, and have anti-whiplash neck rings and the like.

some years ago we looked at I think it was Piquets Indianapolis crash - or was it Mansells, in rec.autos.sport.. the math concluded that peak G was somewhere in the region of 200-400.

fractures and concussion, but he survived..

Note that although a glancing blow, he must have lost a substantial part of the 200mph speed within the limit of the cars structure - only a few feet. No rubber walls at Indy. Just hard concrete.

A few people have survived falling or jumpinmg out of planes without parachutes. about 125mph terminal velocity. IF they hit trees or a supermarket roof (!) they may not die..

snow. Apparently snow is good, and water is not too bad if you go in feet first..

[Brian Morrison]

Oh yes, sorry I was thinking about the competitors rather than marshals, by its nature marshalling is a bit more risky.

There was a marshal killed at Monza, he was hit by a detached wheel, another at Melbourne after a Jacques Villeneuve/Ralf Schumacher crash on the first lap when a wheel went through the access gap in the fence. One marshal had his leg broken at Spa I think, or was it Suzuka? That was due to rain and Martin Brundle sliding off the track while the marshals were retrieving another crashed car. And of course Imola 1994 when a Lotus hit a Benetton on the grid when the car stalled causing a wheel and suspension to go into the grandstand and injured five or six spectators.

My previous comments were specifically aimed at the drivers suffering injury from bits falling off cars. That's very very rare.

[Mike Lane]

The Natural Philosopher wrote on Jul 29, 2009:

tion+internal+injury+racing+crash&source=bl&ots=1y7s5nUZoH&sig=DlW1OlOKvuHCyvY

s2sOU2XQ71n0&hl=en&ei=An5wSrjPHpGhjAetpfydBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&res

Or

[dennis]

However all the figures you quote are for an uninjured driver. As the driver had a broken skull from being hit, all of what you quote is meaningless. When you have a set of figures for what happens to a driver who already has a broken skull let us know. In the meantime I feel fairly safe in thinking the crash was far more serious for the driver with the broken skull than it would be for an uninjured driver.

[dennis]

Was it you that was saying your maths was good?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I dont have figures for being rammed by a supersonic unicorn either.

I cant see it makes a huge amount of difference frankly.

I dont see why or what reasoning you can advance for that.

>

[The Natural Philosopher]

Gosh. A flicker of intelligence?..no it cant be. It has to be random monkey syndrome..

>

[dennis]

That was my point, *you* can't.

However I expect that hitting something while having a broken skull and a broken crash helmet is likely to cause more injury than hitting the same thing without a broken skull and with a working crash helmet.

If crash helmets worked fine when broken they would not need them in the first place.

Its easy, wear a crash helmet and go and smash it into a wall until its broken, then smash it some more. According to you you will be fine.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember PeterC saying something like:

I'd forgotten that. Ta. Too many years of sloppy useage.

[The Natural Philosopher]

"But Ossifer, I had my foot on the decelator all teh time!"

If God had meant us to call brakes accelerators, he wouldn't have made the word DEceleration.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember The Natural Philosopher saying something like:

For f*ck's sake, look it up.

[dave]

Late to this momentous thread - but I long since gave up listening to the bbc "news" as a source of er, real news. The bbc has turned from the best in the world (indeed the "only") to no better than the worst. They are just a glorified soap-opera. They are an un elected political party in this country. A million examples: take one, say about scaremongering; They try their very best day and night, to scare the population witless with their terrorizing reports on swine flu. Graphics of giant floating viruses, reporting the numbers who and why, and of course their very favorite ploy, The Particular Case". Find some unfortunate - interview them until they break down in tears, paint that as "the norm". That is an evil thing to do - an evil thing. The bbc is a disgrace to Britain - it should be scrapped - now.

[The Natural Philosopher]

BBC TV is a disgrace.

Not the whole BBC or the concept.

[Invisible Man]

Certainly I have been appalled by the scaremongering of the BBC News channel. Talking up people stockpiling Tamiflu. They just seem to find one subject each day to go on and on about. News that does not involve picture bites or extreme emotions just does not get a look in.

The only proper news the BBC seem to do now is on radio 4. Anyone know of any other sources?