Cage Time I Belive...

[Dream Weaver 2]

So what are people views on a rear only cage?

[Jay 1]

This is all very interesting, especially I'm planning to fit a cage at some point.

 

I have also rolled a car before, I hit a diesel spill going through a corner at somewhere between 30 and 40 mph and went sideways into a high curb, so I know it does happen at sensible driving speeds. I can't say if I would have been better off with or without a cage, the roof flattened, but I saw it coming and grabbed the passenger seat. Had I stayed upright I would have been in trouble.

 

I think the key point here is what ever you do 'in the name of saftey', you must do correctly. If you fit a cage, also fit bucket seats and harnesses, and also make sure everything is fitted properly. Not just the seats and harnesses either, I have seen what was left of a Mk2 Escort that had a full weld-in cage, but whoever put it in didn't think to strengthen the mounting points and when the car landed on it's roof, the cage just punched through the floor of the car and the roof collapsed.

 

However, before this thread continues, we need to bring more fact into it. CB-Dave, it is great that you challenge people's ways of thinking, and I can see a few of you points, however you are basing too many of your theories on supposition and conjecture. You already admit you're not a vehicle safety engineer or the like, this is just an interest to you. Please prove what you're saying with data, published papers, links to web-pages written by crash-safety experts if you can, we would all learn from anything you have, but by saying 'I think that happened because...' or 'I reckon in 85% of accidents poeple would...' doesn't actually mean anything to anyone unless it can be backed up with some kind of evidence. Sorry to be anal about it, but being an engineer with a science background, I have natural appetite to find out why X equals Y if Z is applied to it and having read this entire thread with great insterest, that sort of information has been rather lacking.

[Rob Thomson 6]

There was a classic story in my local paper (The wonderous Gloucestershire Echo) a few weeks back about a bloke who had been knocked off his bike and proclaimed he was only alive because he was wearing a helmet. His logic was impressive; "A friend of mine was injured by not wearing a helmet". Ehh? How can you be injured by now wearing something? Of course, all the latest research about bike helmets says they're about as much use as The Gloucestershire Echo - but that doesn't stop every stupid bugger and their armies raving about how great they are. Anyhow, I digress.

 

I do a bit of Welsh Road Rallying - a properly bonkers sport that takes place on public roads in the middle of Wales on Saturday nights. It is of course entirely legal and sanctioned by the MSA. Anyway, although you're allowed roll cages (and buckets and harnesses) you're not allowed to wear helmets. Now, a lot of people have some fairly stupendous accidents, but I've never heard about anybody suffering from head injuries. On a recent event we went over a crest into a left hander and saw a big gouge in the bank on the outside of the corner with a 205 headlamp and front bumper sat next to it. Along the road there were a series of interesting scrape marks and a load of Pug bits; the tailgate, a wheel, more lights, bits of trim etc etc.... We went over the next brow and on it's side at the side of the road was a ball of snot that once upon a time had been a 205 - where it had come to rest after rolling for 50yds along the road. Were the crew injured? No. They were stood next to the car with big grins on their faces, cheering us on. Odd.

 

I don't mean to sound totally dismissive of the risks - they crossed my mind before I put the cage in the 309. But I've been involved in motorsport for years and have seen some cars after some horendous accidents and invariably they've had surprisingly intact passenger compartments thanks to their simple 6-point cages. Reading this thread has made me think I should probably get round to replacing my 'temporary' pipe-lagging with some proper FIA padding - but I'd never remove the cage.

[Dream Weaver 2]

I was also involved in road rallies many moons ago and agree with that. My uncle rolled his Chevette RS2000 (yes it had the Ford engine ) down a ravine and upside down into a river.

 

He had no injuries, and also didnt wear a helmet.

 

I'm getting a cage, purely because i will be tracking my car, and only do about 3k miles a year anyway - my local track is Oulton Park and i've seen plenty of rolls there, including a brand new Listers Scoob a few years ago which rolled at Lodge just by clipping a kerb.

Edited January 24, 2005 by Dream Weaver

[Butler 0]

Thanks for the info Rob. Thats what I would expect.

[Batfink 201]

Mattcony If I remember correctly hit the cage with his head because he was running standard seats. proper buckets sit you a lot lower in the car

[Guest CB-Dave]

Interesting reading. Ok CB Dave, you appear to have a strong opinion about this, so how safe is my car? How would describe fitting harnesses and seats properly?

 

I have a caged road car fitted with sparco buckets seat and 4 point harnesses. I totally agree that a cage with standard seats and harnesses is a no no. The seats are on custom runners and welded into the car. The seat now sits a fair bit lower. The shoulder straps are mounted to the floor, but virtually in the boot so I think they with the 45degree limit.

 

I don't think the my head can reach the cage, since the seat is low, but it is padded anyway.

 

So what in your opinion is safer:

 

Standard car or caged car with correct seats and harnesses???

 

I also agree that wearing a lid is obviously safer, but that would apply to a non caged car anyway.

 

I don't 100% aggree with everything you have said, but respect your opinion.

 

BTW I have been toying with the idea of getting the 5th strap for my harnesses.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

a caged car with the correct seats and harnesses (and a lid) is of course safer. That's not what the topic was though - the original poster was saying simply "shall I put a cage in my car, yes or no".

 

It's also fairly pointless to have a car with bucket seats and harnesses if they are fitted to the oe mounting positions, as they still stand a good chance of displacing themselves in a hefty shunt. How many people (and I don't mean motorsport types, I mean your "should I do xyz for safety" types will hard-mount their bucket seats to the car, weld in proper eyelets and bracing plates for a set of harnesses and clamber into a fully padded caged up car with a lid?

 

(btw butler, you said it yourself, your seats are correctly mounted (and therefore I would assume the harnesses to be so also) - but that doesn't say the majority of people's seats are.)

 

the people that managed to get away with no damage at all from having a roll in a caged car with no helmet, I would call lucky - very lucky. imho (and I'm not aquainted with the sport) it seems odd that road rallying forbids helmets and is MSA sanctioned.

 

all I understand about road rallying is that you have to maintain an average speed and that speed is not in excess of the posted limit - it may be that you have to maintain an average of 30mph and if you go faster than that, you get penalised. I don't mean to put a downer on the sport but it's less ferocious (in my eyes) than a competitive motorsport (as the MSA say, road rallying is not a race).

 

I've been a passenger in a road going rally prepared 205, caged up with five point harnesses, properly mounted FIA approved seats, fire extinguishers etc - but no lid, and I felt so vulnerable sitting there with that much steel, that close to my head.

 

This is my personal opinion - cages have no place in a car that is used on the road. They're a motorsport safety aid and as such should be used in motorsport only. Going by the sounds of things, most people here have cars that can scarcely be called road cars anymore - they are used on the road yes, but have none of the creature comforts of a road car - and as such are more akin to a rally car or race car.

 

Parting comment - I just hope that no-one has to find out how effective their 'safety' cage is - my reasons for that are *well* documented.

[mikeyde 1]

cheers to everyone that has had an input into this thread and especialy CB-Dave as there are details in some of those post i would have never known simply asking around friends. i think ill spend money on brakes and suspention rather than a cage as it doesent seem to be appropriate at the moment.

 

Thanks,

Mikey

[Butler 0]

Thanks CB Dave. Thats cleared up all I wanted to know. It seems I we do agree more or less.

 

Cheers.

 

 

Yeah spend the money on brakes and suspension. Only fit a cage if you really want to and have done the seats and harnesses first.

[adam_young 0]

Well I'm glad we had this thread.

I was only considering getting one for safety reasons anyway (not for looks like some people do).

 

I'm not going to try and guess what type of crash I might have, but I do know that I wouldn't be wearing a helmet on the road and as I'm 6ft tall I'd just be hitting my head on a big metal bar. I reckon that the cage would actually be endangering me in a road car.

[Dream Weaver 2]

Check this out for a roll

 

http://www.m90.org/view_image.php?image_id=999

[Butler 0]

Cabin still in tact.

 

Any remember Pentti Arikala's rolled Saphire Cossie on the RAC. Him and co driver walked away, barely a scratch

[Jay 1]

To be honest I was hoping for some hard evidence from this thread, not just an opinion of someone not involved in motorsport or crash saftey engineering. Sadly none has appeared, so this thread really is just a missed opportunity for us all to learn something...

[Dream Weaver 2]

Hard evidence of what, there are too many factors to be able to give any evidence.

 

The only way to check is to try rolling a car with a cage and no helmet, see what happens but I doubt anyone would volunteer for that

[McPikie 0]

Cages, if installed properly, can save lives............. that is a fact.

 

Look here at the pics of Martin Hadlands Escort Cosworth

 

 

he was overtaking ferrarri's, lambos etc etc on the wrong side of the road in Morrocco when his rear left wheel clipped the gravel and spun him out at over 160MPH. If anyone saw the Gumball 04 footage, you will have seen the said crash

 

Now, without that cage, him and his co-pilot Lee would have been dead.............. as it was, Lee broke his spine as he was not wearing his harnesses.

 

If I had a seriously fast car, I would have it caged up

[Butler 0]

You could argue that the Jester hat in pic 3 saved him. LOL

[Simmy 0]

Simmy, Matt's crash wasn't in France, it was up in either Lancashire or Yorkshire on his way home before heading to Elvington (which he never made).

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

My Mistake point is he had a cage and wouldn't be with us today. His words.

 

Although i understand everyones theory but i have never heard a story of someone dying or being seriously injured in a car crash because because they had a rollcage fitted but no helmet? However i have heard many stories of people having their lives saved by one... whilst not wearing a helmet.

 

That's just the point of view i see it from anyhow.

[Jay 1]

Hard evidence of what, there are too many factors to be able to give any evidence.

 

The only way to check is to try rolling a car with a cage and no helmet, see what happens but I doubt anyone would volunteer for that

 

I'm sure there is plenty of information out there, FIA-approved rollcage manufacturers would all be aware of the safety factors of correct rollcage design, crash impact results, transference of impact forces to occupants, as would a number of motorsport engineering companies involved in race car development. They don't design the kind of rollcages that save Petter Solberg's life in the German round of the WRC last year by accident. In fact I'd be surprised if the FIA themselves don't have huge piles of data gathered for the specific use of improving driver safety in all possible crash scenarios. That is one of the reasons the FIA exist after all.

 

I'm just saying that opinions like 'I think in X situation, you'd do Y' are pretty meaningless unless backed up with data produced by properly studying situation X, the kind of data which this topic is sadly lacking.

Edited January 25, 2005 by Jay

[Rob Thomson 6]

the people that managed to get away with no damage at all from having a roll in a caged car with no helmet, I would call lucky - very lucky. imho (and I'm not aquainted with the sport) it seems odd that road rallying forbids helmets and is MSA sanctioned.

 

The reason helmets aren't allowed on road rallies is because the MSA don't want to give the impression that competitive rallying is allowed on the public highway.

 

all I understand about road rallying is that you have to maintain an average speed and that speed is not in excess of the posted limit - it may be that you have to maintain an average of 30mph and if you go faster than that, you get penalised. I don't mean to put a downer on the sport but it's less ferocious (in my eyes) than a competitive motorsport (as the MSA say, road rallying is not a race).

 

Sure, road rallies are fundamentally navigational events and they're run at a 30mph average speed - but the Welsh rallies are cleverly organised so that you are pretty much flat-out all night. Even the best crews lose time on most sections despite being totally mental. Download the clip here to see what I mean. The bloke in the gold Corolla is indicitive of how the top crews drive all night. In my humble opinion, the best road rally drivers are easily as talented - and just as committed - as the best national stage rally drivers.

[Dream Weaver 2]

I'm sure there is plenty of information out there, FIA-approved rollcage manufacturers would all be aware of the safety factors of correct rollcage design, crash impact results, transference of impact forces to occupants, as would a number of motorsport engineering companies involved in race car development. They don't design the kind of rollcages that save Petter Solberg's life in the German round of the WRC last year by accident. In fact I'd be surprised if the FIA themselves don't have huge piles of data gathered for the specific use of improving driver safety in all possible crash scenarios. That is one of the reasons the FIA exist after all.

 

I'm just saying that opinions like 'I think in X situation, you'd do Y' are pretty meaningless unless backed up with data produced by properly studying situation X, the kind of data which this topic is sadly lacking.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Point taken, but transversely surely companies such as SD, OMP etc with all their R&D wouldn't sell cages for road cars if they were so dangerous? They would only sell to competitors with race licenses.

[Butler 0]

That looks like a lot of fun. I need to move to Wales.

Edited January 25, 2005 by Butler

[SPGTi 2]

Also go and look at the Moonbeam clip (uses lots of rough whites) and even the Telford Novice. It is not just a leisuely drive round. At the novice event there was a high police presence as well.

 

Last Friday I did a scatter which is classed as a pure navigation event. It was judged on average time for each clue. Allowing a min time of 2 hours max 2 1/2 hours. There were some stage and serious road ralliers taking part we finished with an average of 11mins 3 sec (we couldn't find some answers so visited more points, so should have had a finish time of 8min 20 sec ish) the winners were 6min 03sec in full roll caged cars. Most of the route could be done on 60mph narrow lanes.

 

Sorry this has gone off topic but it is just to illustrate that it is easy to end up in a ditch or rolled on a road rally without breaking any speed limits. A roll cage must be safer. I am sure that the MSA would be banning roll cages from road rallies if head injuries were occurring from using them.

 

Steve

[Dream Weaver 2]

Was gonna say, I dont remember the road rallies we went to as 30mph jaunts - they were all flat out, and we once nearly got squashed by a TR7 at full tilt

[Rob Thomson 6]

Sorry to go about this, but I've spent the last 10 minutes re-reading this post and really think a lot of this conjecture is just bollocks. Here's some conjecture of my own, which is quite probably bollocks also, but hey, it's food for thought and all that....

 

Right then, so cages are dangerous because you can smack your head on them. So what's the alternative? CB-Dave, somewhere you say something like, "I'd rather put my head through a window than hit it on a cage...". Now, I can't speak for everyone on this forum, but my rollcage is nowhere near my window. It sits neatly in the seam between the roof and the door-frame. If my head got thrown towards the window in an accident, the cage wouldn't stop it.

 

Obviously if my head were to get thrown towards the seam between the roof and the door-frame it would now hit the cage. But is that really so much worse than it hitting the standard bodywork? I don't think there's much difference. The roof structure around the top of the glass is all pretty strong stuff - ok, not as strong as a 2" CDS tube perhaps, but probably strong enough to put you in Permanent Vegetitive State (I assume that's what PVS stands for?).

 

I can't see the bodywork deforming that much if you smacked your head on it. Ok, if you headbutted the centre of the roof it would deform loads, but nothing that's structural is going to move much however hard you bang your head against it. I don't see that the bodywork is going to give you any less of a headache than a rollcage.

 

It also seems to me that if you're thrown towards part of the car, it's probably because that part of the car is slowing down for some reason - probably because it's just impacted with the ground or whatever. If it's impacting with something outside as you hit it from the inside it's definitely not going to deform favourably, is it? In fact the likelihood is that it's going to deform inwards which increases the force of the impact with your head. The roll-cage would prevent that.

 

There's also some discussion about 1950s cars being built so strongly that they were bad in accidents. I think you've missed the point. The biggest factor in accidents at that time was the lack of seatbelts. Yep, cars were strong and stopped pretty damn fast in accidents, but if the passenger isn't strapped into the car they're going to headbutt the dash (which wasn't designed to resist injuries) pretty bloody quick.

 

Think about proper cars in motorsport. F1 cars are infinitely stronger than any piece of 50's junk, have minimal crumple zones, and yet because the drivers are properly strapped in they can walk away from almost any accident. I think that altering the structural integrity of a 1980s hatch by fitting a cage can only be a good thing.

[Guest Pete Faulkner]

They don't design the kind of rollcages that save Petter Solberg's life in the German round of the WRC last year by accident. In fact I'd be surprised if the FIA themselves don't have huge piles of data gathered for the specific use of improving driver safety in all possible crash scenarios. That is one of the reasons the FIA exist after all..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I actually now work at Prodrive fabricating the body shells and rollcages of the scooby rally cars and I can vouch for the fact that the work that goes into them, in the designing,testing and fabrication processes is nothing short of unbelieveable. The ways in which safety had progressed is a massive achievement, and can be clearly seen if you look back at things like the simplistic rollcage structure of the 205 T16. Knowing what i know now, there's no way on earth I'd want to drive a 400bhp monster flat-out and sideways through a forest with only that kind of protection, it was no wonder people got hurt.

 

Anyway, back on topic. What I'm struggling to understand though, is what is wanted from this post? At the end of the day, we're all a bunch of 205 enthusiasts, we know what we do about them through experiences we've had ourselves or from what we hear from others. Surely if hard evidence on crash test results is wanted there are more appropriate places to enquire, like the fia or mira for example?