Allan Hess wrote:
>I remember a news story in which it was determined that the person was
>indeed killed by their head smashing into the roll bar - this was a Jeep CJ
>or some kind of Jeep with a factory roll bar.
The nightmare I have is that I'm hit from behind... if the whiplash doesn't
take me out of the picture, then the roll bar striking the back of my
thick skull on the left side will. In fact, I think the latter would
prevent the former! I can't get the headrests to stay up where they
belong, so the headrest hits me right below or at the union between by neck
and my back. Perfect recipe for whiplash.
My idea is to design a headrest that is incorporated into the roll bar with
a nice, heavy pad. It wouldn't be too difficult to do, but I'm also
wondering if that doesn't create some other safety issues. Should the
headrest ALWAYS be integrated into the SEAT? Or is it OK to have it be
part of the roll bar separate from the seat? I'm imagining what might
happen in an impact if the seat and roll bar were to move dramatically in
different directions. Can that happen? Wouldn't that be a bad thing?
I'm reminded of an article in the late 80's in Car & Driver where they
introduced the "new" Lotus Elan. Naturally, there were plenty of
comparisons between the old Elan and this new model. One such comparison
was to point out that the the new Elan had special "deformable structures"
built into the chassis for impact protection, while the old Elan used its
OCCUPANTS as "deformable structures." If that weren't so "not-funny" it'd
be hilarious!
Pete Chadwell
1973 TR6
|