Even when we're doing silly stuff with cars we need to be as safe as possible, reckons Glenn Torrens, but who makes the 'safe' decisions?
Regular readers will know I enjoy motorsports in my modified VW Beetles and have been a participant at Australian Speed Week’s high-speed salt-lake speed event for five years.
And even when doing ‘dangerous’ stuff, I want to be as safe as possible. That’s why I have several grand’s worth of roll-cage in my race car, an electric fuel pump cut-off switch, a $1500 race seat with a wrap-around head rest and – of course – I wear a helmet.
I also have a HANS device. I knew little of HANS – Head And Neck Support technology that keeps your neck stable during a crash – until racers and magazine test-drive colleagues John Bowe and Warren Luff drilled into me a great respect for this simple but awesomely safe F1-developed technology. In fact, I can remember Luffy basically pleading with me to never, ever strap myself into a race car without a HANS device ever, ever again. It’s compulsory for me and others to use at Australian Speed Week and a quick YouTube search for HANS proves why.
The technology works, and it’s not expensive.
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On the flip side, there have been a couple of significant incidents in Aussie motorsport in recent years when people who have not been wearing HANS devices have been critically injured. I witnessed a car flip and land heavily on its nose; the driver was walking and seemed okay but his condition worsened during the night and he was helicoptered to hospital in the small hours of the morning. He had a broken neck.
Another incident where a bloke doing life in a wheelchair publicly declared, if he’d known about HANS-type technology, he would have been using it. Yes, it was motorsport but his crash was at an estimated 60km/h… hardly ‘fast’ compared to some track speeds.
I use my HANS device in motorsport even if it’s not compulsory: Speed Week (it’s mandatory – as are wrist restraints and other safety tech), my hill-climbs, the airport sprints I’ve done, my regular Wednesday night runs at Sydney Dragway and the street sprints I’ve attended at Geelong and Leyburn.
So you can imagine my surprise when I read about an event that seemed to be loosening its safety regs by allowing participants to run what appeared to be quite fast with nothing more than a helmet. In fact, the event seemed to be putting a negative spin on the use of a HANS device by announcing: “Most competitors will no longer require a HANS…” as if it was a bad thing.
The event was a street sprint that I have not attended and so I do not know the layout nor conditions. But I can assume that, like other events, there would be some road-side furniture to hit. The event’s claim: “Unless highly modified, naturally aspirated 4 & 6 cylinder sedans and utes will not be capable of doing a [fast] lap time” hints to me the speeds would probably be a little higher than the typical 50 or 60km/h we’re all used to in town and in (mostly) street-based cars. It’s not the only one: Some events don’t require HANS until speeds are 200km/h or more, despite people suffering life-changing spinal injuries at just 60km/h.
As always a group of people out there will say, “I’ve never crashed,” or “I’ve never had a problem…” with regard to not wearing a HANS device or using other simple but significant safety tech. Others will bleat: “It’s too expensive,” or “It’s not worth it – I’ll only use it a few times a year…” But that’s missing the point. It’s your neck, people.
I’m all for affordable grass-roots motorsport but with the well-known (and usually well-managed) risks of motorsport, and the high level of safety equipment available today, I reckon it’s pretty-much negligent for an event to take a step backward with safety.
Even if you’re not fast enough to win your class, you should do everything you can to look after your neck! What do you reckon?
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