At 10:10 AM 10/9/01 -0700, Max Heim wrote:
>.... but I wonder, are we getting too paranoid? Let me just ask the list:
>how many of you have ever rolled over in an automobile? Were you a child
>at the time? Were there any children in the vehicle at the time? I would
>almost think that the probability was so small as to be negligible. ....
Yup, BTDT, thankfully no kids in the car at the time, although my kid does
ride with me quite often. This will happen in the most unpredictable of
curcumstances (of course if you could predict it you could avoid it). The
probability is indeed small, but not negligable.
We were chatting about this very subject about five years ago on this list,
often mentioning how unlikely it would be to have your car roll over. Then
just a couple of weeks later my car was upside down in a ditch near
Redwing, Minnesota, during a TSD rally with a set average speed of 30
mph. At the time of the incident I was going down hill at less than 20 mph
with no other traffic on the road. It was a narrow crowned country road,
and it was snow packed and slippery. The tires just lost the grip, and the
car skidded slowly but surely off the crown of the road and into the
ditch. The road bank was sloped about 45 degrees down, and the ditch was
increasingly deep, until all four wheels were off the road and on the
embankment. I was hard on the brakes with the wheels locked up and slowing
down gradually as it was sliding down the hill in the ditch. Just before
it came to a full stop there was a really small bump, not more than two
inches high. When the left front wheel hit this bump the car flipped
squarely upside down in snow bank.
By sheer coinicidence this was not my MGA, but was my '87 Mazda RX7. The
windscreen was pretty well crushed, the front several inches of the roof
was badly wrinkled, but otherwise only a few minor sheet metal dents
elsewhere. I was wearing the seatbelt with single shoulder strap, so not a
scratch on me, and it was all rather interresting at the time. I had
originally planned on driving the MGA in this rally with a friend, but the
friend couldn't make it at the last minute. Since I was going to run the
rally solo I took the RX7 because it has nice map lights. Sometimes we
just get lucky?
With my MGA in times past I have been inadvertently off the road and across
the dtich a couple of times, and even glanced off a guard rail at speed
once. More than 30 years ago I t-boned a Plymouth Fury at about 40 mph
with an MGA when some drunk turned in front of me at an intersection
(totaled that MGA of course). I have also been autocrossing regularly for
the last 10 or 12 years (which I consider to be at least as safe as driving
on the open roads), and I drive this car around 17,000 miles per year
(average). But still I do not have a roll bar in my MGA. I might have
installed one several years ago, except for the difficulty of fitting one
in the MGA.
You can argue all you want about how unlikely a rollover would be, but
accidents by definition are unpredictable and unavoidable to some
extent. During our 1997 "Brit Run to the Sun" trip to Alaska one of our
compatriots was killed when his MGB GT rolled on its side and hit a tree,
crushing the roof. It is unlikely that a single hoop roll bar would have
made any difference in this unusual case. This was a single car incident
on a straight clear and dry highway with no other traffic around. Those
with a strong constitution can see the pictures and notes here:
http://www.chicagolandmgclub.com/members/barneymg/ak/pic6/6-4.htm
Barney Gaylord
1958 MGA with an attitude
http://www.ntsource.com/~barneymg
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