So they are going with Halo devices then

[rscott]

Flooble said:

Hunky Dory said:

PW said:

I bet if someone tried to tell you what to have for breakfast you'd all be livid, but potentially life saving safety features for others? BOOO! How dare they entertain the idea! Don't they know I WATCH ALMOST EVERY RACE?

Well said.

Whilst I agree that the halo idea is certainly not a perfect design (and far from beautiful!) the reality is that there isn't a 100% effective solution to every foreseeable accident for this type of equipment yet. What does seem pretty obvious though is that it will incrementally improve safety and reduce the risk of serious head injury so therefore I find it hard to understand an argument against the idea based on aesthetics.

Arguments from fans against safety functions in favour of cosmetics are slightly ironic when made in the same breath as statements that F1 leadership has lost its way.

Everyone needs to get over it. It will evolve in looks and in a few years time we (like the drivers I suspect) will barely notice it's there.

My argument was that they appear to have chosen what would seem to be a somewhat ineffective option of the two designs, which also happens to be the uglier of the two but does have space for those precious logos. I am concerned about the criteria used to judge, especially given their statement that the aeroscreen was unsatisfactory.

While I am not an engineer and so this opinion is essentially worthless, I do have serious concerns about the amount of safety improvement that the Halo will actually provide. It will only deflect the largest items of debris which, by definition, would apply the least pressure to the helmet anyway. It's the sharp point on a knife that hurts, not the dull handle. If the risk is the overall momentum of debris then it may make a difference but I am concerned that any improvement will be balanced by the increased risk of it deflecting small items back into the cockpit. Look at the incidents:

It may have saved Maria De Villota, but so would sensible safety measures around having sharp horizontal objects at driver head height. The aeroscreen would also likely have done the job in that case.
It likely would not have saved Jules Bianchi as the sudden stop would still be lethal. Again, the aeroscreen would likely have been as effective, possibly even more so as it may have offered a marginally slower deceleration.
It probably would have saved Justin Wilson, although the nose cone of cars is quite pointy so may well still penetrate the gaps in the halo versus bouncing off the aeroscreen.
It would have made no different at all to Massa's accident, but may trigger a few more (e.g. Button in Monaco on Thursday could have seen bits bouncing down off the Halo cross bar instead of going past the cockpit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C03ocAeLfN0). Whereas the aeroscreen would deflect the bolt etc.
Henry Surtees incident is possibly the only one that the halo would have helped in and aeroscreen is likely to have been just as effective.


Hence the question for me is why this device is the best that the engineers can design. Aircraft fly much (much!) faster and hit objects that are just as heavy (seen an Eagle?). They require optically clear canopies for obvious reasons. So the sticking point would seem to be that it's easier to make an enclosed canopy than an open one and that for some reason they can't build a carbon fibre ring at the top (as on the halo) to support the "rim" of the aeroscreen?

Maybe I should go get my tinfoil hat, but it just seems like a bodged up kludge of a solution which isn't going to help as much as the alternatives could.

A full canopy on a fighter weighs several hundred pounds - far too much to simply bolt on to an existing F1 design.

As had already been posted in here, the aero screen has failed recent tests and is nowhere near ready to implement. It's not even been tested in the width it would need to be in order to accommodate the driver's head fully ( needs to be wider to allow unrestricted movement in an accident ).
Halo is ugly, but has been shown to deflect wheels, which is one of their primary concerns.

[Eric Mc]

Would it deflect a manhole cover?

[The Hypno-Toad]

To me it looks like yet another bodge job.

To my mind, the F1 needs to decide if it wants to st or get off the pot. If it wants fully enclosed cockpits, then do it. If wants to keep to its history of open cockpits, then do it. Don't introduce this half arsed bodge job that looks terrible and probably won't be 100% effective in stopping all head trauma accidents.

Just another example of how the sport is disappearing up its own colon.

[n3il123]

To be honest I don't think anything would have helped in the Bianchi, looking at the picture the whole chassis from head height up has gone including the bit where the roll bar was, the halo would have gone with it and potentially taken his head with it too.

[Eric Mc]

The way it works now is that - a driver dies - major changes are made to the cars. It's par for the course and is indicative of an organisation that is WAY too political now and responds as politicians do - i.e. they have to be seen to so something , anything, to keep the media off their backs - even if the "something" they are doing at best improves nothing and and worst actually makes matters worse.

At some point in the future, another driver will die. That is guaranteed in high speed sports like motor racing. Constantly fiddling with things will not eliminate this fact.

[Hunky Dory]

Eric Mc said:

The way it works now is that - a driver dies - major changes are made to the cars. It's par for the course and is indicative of an organisation that is WAY too political now and responds as politicians do - i.e. they have to be seen to so something , anything, to keep the media off their backs - even if the "something" they are doing at best improves nothing and and worst actually makes matters worse.

At some point in the future, another driver will die. That is guaranteed in high speed sports like motor racing. Constantly fiddling with things will not eliminate this fact.

Conversely, would you prefer no action to be taken in the event of a death? Lets not forget that the prime motivation for the halo and similar devices was to offer protection from large debris such as wheels, as I understood it. What other examples are there of post-fatality changes that were ineffective in reducing either the likelihood or the effects of a similar event from this evil organisation who are first and foremost concerned with being seen to act?

Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiment that the organisation is over political and moving further and further from what is best for "The Racing", I feel that in this instance that is far from the sole motivation for investigating these developments.

[Eric Mc]

Hunky Dory said:

Conversely, would you prefer no action to be taken in the event of a death?

In the context of modern motor racing yes.

Knee jerkism is rife in the modern world and F1 is being badly neutered by such mentality. This is 2016, not 1966.

[Hunky Dory]

Eric Mc said:

In the context of modern motor racing yes.

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

As we have seen this week, like it or not, there are hordes of ambulance chasers who, when presented with such a negligent course of action, would relish the opportunity to nail the sport to the wall in the courts.

Legal action along those lines, more than anything else in can think of, would probably present one of the greatest threats to the future of F1.

[Eric Mc]

Hunky Dory said:

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

No - it's not that we take no action. It means action is only taken when that action actually leads to a genuine improvement. So, on occasion, no action is the correct response.

At the moment, the knee jerk response is "we must take action - it doesn't really matter what the action actually is as long as we are seen to be doing something".

In any case, EVERY death in motor sport does not automatically mean that that particular death can be cured by wholesale changes to the cars or circuits or even procedures. Bad things sometimes just happen.

[Artey]

Hunky Dory said:

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

If one single death should be enough to change everything until the risk is fully eliminated I guess you don't fly, drive, walk, or even sit at home do you?

[0000]

Flooble said:

It would have made no different at all to Massa's accident, but may trigger a few more (e.g. Button in Monaco on Thursday could have seen bits bouncing down off the Halo cross bar instead of going past the cockpit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C03ocAeLfN0).

That's the bit that annoys me most; we don't know what incident is next although you can make some educated guesses, but it doesn't take much imagination to see this making a bad situation worse. That probably applies to just about any safety device to some extent but the balance here seems badly wrong. Surely just wait for the aeroscreen to be ready, if it will be.

[Artey]

The solution is simple. We should ban F1 and replace it with Nascar. That V8 roar will make up for everything. And will be safe as fk.

[Hunky Dory]

Artey said:

Hunky Dory said:

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

If one single death should be enough to change everything until the risk is fully eliminated I guess you don't fly, drive, walk, or even sit at home do you?

Can you please point out where I stated that everything should be changed to the point a risk is eliminated?

[Artey]

Hunky Dory said:

Artey said:

Hunky Dory said:

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

If one single death should be enough to change everything until the risk is fully eliminated I guess you don't fly, drive, walk, or even sit at home do you?

Can you please point out where I stated that everything should be changed to the point a risk is eliminated?

Hunky Dory said:

Conversely, would you prefer no action to be taken in the event of a death? (...)

Changing the character of the sport because of casualties which are part of the game is what I would call doing everything to eliminate the risk in response to a knee jerk reaction. I don't see anyone suggest building a cage around cyclists to avoid head injuries despite there being way more casualties than in open wheel racing. In fact cyclists openly say that they don't want to wear head protection and nobody forces them saying "we need to take action in the event of a death".

[Crafty_]

Hunky Dory said:

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

As we have seen this week, like it or not, there are hordes of ambulance chasers who, when presented with such a negligent course of action, would relish the opportunity to nail the sport to the wall in the courts.

Legal action along those lines, more than anything else in can think of, would probably present one of the greatest threats to the future of F1.

If they had Halo's it wouldn't have saved Bianchi, so halo in response to his death is pointless.

In case you didn't notice they implemented the VSC in response to Bianchi's death, which is a good thing and a sensible response. Just like helmets were improved after Massa's accident.

Surely, if we want to avoid deaths we have the drivers drive the cars from the garage via remote control. Thats going to be safer - would you support this ?

Halo is a fudge and is being done for political reasons.

[Hunky Dory]

Crafty_ said:

Hunky Dory said:

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

As we have seen this week, like it or not, there are hordes of ambulance chasers who, when presented with such a negligent course of action, would relish the opportunity to nail the sport to the wall in the courts.

Legal action along those lines, more than anything else in can think of, would probably present one of the greatest threats to the future of F1.

If they had Halo's it wouldn't have saved Bianchi, so halo in response to his death is pointless.

In case you didn't notice they implemented the VSC in response to Bianchi's death, which is a good thing and a sensible response. Just like helmets were improved after Massa's accident.

Surely, if we want to avoid deaths we have the drivers drive the cars from the garage via remote control. Thats going to be safer - would you support this ?

Halo is a fudge and is being done for political reasons.

I made no reference to how a halo device could have made any difference to Bianchi's death. Like many of us I have read and been exposed to much "evidence" in the media surrounding the cause of his death but know full well that the rate of deceleration alone was the major factor. In fact, to indulge in some pointless speculation, I could imagine that a halo device, if anything, may have caused even more head trauma, albeit somewhat of a moot point, obviously.

I did notice the implementation of the VSC, but thank you for pointing it out all the same. I also noted that it seems highly unlikely that 6T of loader will find itself sat on the run off area of any race in the future and this is also as a direct result of subsequent changes to the procedures. Both these changes are surely the actions of an organisation whose primary reason for change is improving safety? Would anyone argue that either of these changes were ineffective or unnecessary responses to the events that lead to Bianchi's accident?

Either way, as I said earlier my understanding of the halo proposal was that it was primarily aimed at reducing the risk of severe head injury as a result of large debris striking the driver and thus far I have (unfortunately) yet to see a better proven solution or a more convincing argument against it than "it looks st". An argument that, to those outside the sport, must at best appear shallow.

In the event that something like this is implemented, I will get no less enjoyment watching a race in the knowledge that someone is less likely to be seriously injured in the unlikely event of them being struck on the head by a large object.

I would prefer to accept that those involved in the sport (including several of those who sit behind the wheel, lest we forget) believe there is need to act on these type of risks and, furthermore, trust that the many many intelligent people involved in designing a solution will come up with something that looks a little nicer and in the end we all accept as just another part of the car, as we do now for HANS devices, roll hoops and high cockpit sides.

[Hunky Dory]

Artey said:

Hunky Dory said:

Artey said:

Hunky Dory said:

Honestly?

Someone dies and we take no action, learning nothing from it? I'm afraid that's an argument that I have either misunderstood or cannot begin to understand.

If one single death should be enough to change everything until the risk is fully eliminated I guess you don't fly, drive, walk, or even sit at home do you?

Can you please point out where I stated that everything should be changed to the point a risk is eliminated?

Hunky Dory said:

Conversely, would you prefer no action to be taken in the event of a death? (...)

Changing the character of the sport because of casualties which are part of the game is what I would call doing everything to eliminate the risk in response to a knee jerk reaction. I don't see anyone suggest building a cage around cyclists to avoid head injuries despite there being way more casualties than in open wheel racing. In fact cyclists openly say that they don't want to wear head protection and nobody forces them saying "we need to take action in the event of a death".

You quoted me asking a question. You do realise how different that it is from me making a statement, don't you?

[Artey]

Hunky Dory said:

You quoted me asking a question. You do realise how different that it is from me making a statement, don't you?

It's obvious that it was a rhetorical question, wasn't it.

After wikipedia "A rhetorical question is a figure of speech in the form of a question that is asked to make a point rather than to elicit an answer."

[oyster]

Eric Mc said:

Hunky Dory said:

Conversely, would you prefer no action to be taken in the event of a death?

In the context of modern motor racing yes.

Knee jerkism is rife in the modern world and F1 is being badly neutered by such mentality. This is 2016, not 1966.

I don't see any neutering happening.

I also can't see why safety improvements can't be made as we go along and more urgently following a serious injury or fatality.


If the windscreen isn't ready and the halo is, AND the halo has been tested and assessed as improving safety, then it's fine to be introduced.

Unless, of course, you wish F1 to be a blood sport. I don't.

[LaurasOtherHalf]

Might make a nice camera mounting point.