VEHICLE SAFETY

Like most other race drivers, I have had my share of crashes. Way back, before they priced themselves out of existence, I raced a stock car – a contact sport. I have also raced hot-rods (on wet grass and mud). I've had suspension failure at 120 MPH, on a road circuit, ending upside-down in the tyre barriers. I really can't remember how many times I've had to be helped out of a seriously damaged car. But I'm still here, and I have many, many times seen far worse accidents than mine, where the drivers walked away. Not all - some of my acquaintances didn't make it, but even so, most of us admit to feeling safer in our race cars than we often do on the public roads. So how come so many drivers manage to walk away, especially as race cars do not have air-bags? - It's because we have a good roll-cage, a proper harness, and our seats are fixed in securely.

In theory, at least, air-bags can be a reasonable substitute for a harness, and vehicle builders are most definitely and seriously pursuing the integrated roll-cage. So, we can expect road vehicles to start catching up. But there is a little more to it than that.

Open the door of a racing saloon, and you will have to step over at least one side-bar. Not a realistic option for a road car – or is it? A tube or tubes in the door is no problem, and neither are matching tubes in the body. Hydraulic or pneumatically operated bolts could connect the units up as part of the door-closing operation. Actually built into the vehicle, the cage elements can be much lighter than those added to racing saloons, but just as effective.

Power steering has introduced hydraulics into the guidance mechanism, but how much better would it be if that massive steering column didn't exist! You might be reluctant to depend entirely upon an indirect hydraulic link (to be honest, so would I) but it doesn't have to go that far. Flexible cables can provide a more than adequate back-up, and they won't crush your chest, or act as a "solid bit" lever.

But we can go much further than this! Take a look at the driver's "tub" of an F1 or Indy car and you will see the science of safety applied to the fundamental construction. The people who design these things can teach us a whole lot about road vehicle safety. I have talked with them, and although they are often hesitant about making wider claims, it is very clear that distributed stress is the keystone. They also say that their biggest headaches are those bits of the machine which "don't want to play the game". That is, the "solid bits" that invade the monocoque in a crash. If it were not for these bits, they could design a tiny vehicle which would "bounce" off a head on collision with a heavy lorry.

Say we take these guys seriously, and set about designing a safe road car. It seems that size really doesn't matter. The big American car does tend to fair better in a head-on collision with a mini, but it doesn't tend to "bounce" terribly well. In a head-on collision with a truck, the extra weight can actually be detrimental. I don't say that, generally speaking, small cars are safer, but it would seem that they can be made every bit as safe. I'd rather hit the wall at 180 MPH in an Indy car than in the biggest road car, or even in the heaviest truck! And so would you – if you had to.

Four-wheel drive allows for much better stress distribution than can any two-wheel drive configuration. And with the 'motors' contained in the wheels, supplied with hydraulic power through flexible pipes, the road going monocoque starts to become a real possibility. If we exploit road wheel suspension units designed to part company from the vehicle under impact stress (tethered so as not to become missiles in their own right) and lightweight engine, probably (though not essentially) at the rear (again designed to move independently from the monocoque and dive 'under' the vehicle as in the NASCAR designs) and we are fast approaching race track standards.

Don't let the perceived cost of race cars fool you into thinking that such road vehicle technology would be expensive. It's more a matter of form and forethought than fancy materials, and we are talking mass production, not hand-crafting. (In fact, if safety were to become an acceptable design criterion to drivers, as well as the manufacturers, there would be serious scope for cost reductions). Race cars use expensive carbon fibre to reduce weight, but its impact strength can be equalled by slightly heavier common steel.

The main thing is to get the engine weight down, get a better distribution of other weight and stress, get rid of the heavy invasive bits, and design cars as if they were intended to crash. That's the way the race car designers see it, and so should we.

Not only would an hydraulic transmission system get rid of many potentially dangerous 'bits'. With the 'motors' in the wheels, and independent torque control of each, vehicles could be made much safer to drive. Traction control, even applied to relatively crude two-wheel drive differential systems, effects an extraordinary improvement to safety. With finer control over the individual wheels, and better weight distribution to limit the movement of the centre of gravity, vehicles which could be safely driven on ice, by novices, would be achievable. Accidents don't just happen, and even when they do happen, they do not have to kill.

John Allen