THMotorsports

Even with the roll bar padding, that's not going to protect you from head injury if you make solid contact without a helmet on.

Harnesses on the street are a real pain though, really limits your mobility and also your visibility since you can't turn in the seat.

Do you have a fixed back seat?

Though you should only be driving at a low limit on public streets and of course we'd all like to avoid crashing, accidents DO happen.

eight

I thought that you were not allowed to run a harness with the oem airbag due to the airbag's oem design. The airbag was designed with the driver's movement in a 3pt in mind in that the driver will move closer to the airbag and thus stopping the airbag before it reaches maximum velocity. A 3pt is safer with an airbag for this reason. If you have a harness that's designed to keep you locked in your seat and not moving, the airbag does more harm than a 3pt would and so it'd be safer to run a 6pt.

At least that's what I was told and it seems like sound reasoning.

I do understand the concern but there are many deaths that occur and if you want to talk about deaths caused by neck related injuries then we can talk about how 3pt's can fling a passenger around or cause submarining. There are pro's and con's to both but both are intended to decrease the chance of death no matter what drastically.

Basically, just put on a damn seat belt...

freq

9 points and airbag and a helmet at all times.

Bullwings

robrob

No, you can see this is untrue just by watching crash test dummies. The airbags are completely inflated before the dummy hits the airbag.

DavidNJ

Airbags were originally installed as a passive restraint in lieu of a shoulder harness. The alternative was the mousetrap shoulder harnesses on some cars around 1990.

The harness takes longer to put on, requiring the straps to be positioned in advance. Once on, it's hard to reach center stack controls and possibly the ignition key.

Many harnesses have a 3" lap belt. There is an argument that a 2" lap belt is safer, even reducing head and neck loads, because of its relative position to the Illiac Crest on the pelvis. Apparently, the 2" belt distributes the load better and allows the belt to be tighter.

Both FHN restraints and containment seats are relatively recent, last 20 years. Containment seats are still relatively rare in amateur racing.

An open car is never going to be as safe as a closed car with equivalent safety equipment. However, the S2000's low CG and the generally solid suspension design provides some advantages over other street cars.

Doe reference, roll bars were added to F1 in 1961, harness in 67-68, full face helmets in 1968 by Dan Gurney. Graham Hill broke both legs when he removed his belts at the 1969 US GP.

robrob

Around 1996 while stationed at the Air Force Academy we had a petite woman die in a slow speed impact with a retractable road barrier at a nearby high security facility. I was a headquarters level safety officer and got indirectly involved in the accident investigation. Due to her size and short legs she was positioned very close to the steering wheel and air bag. She was cleared through a checkpoint but for some reason was delayed in moving forward and a retractable wall style barrier came back up and she hit it at less than 5mph. Her airbag deployed and killed her on the spot. The car had the early style, full power airbags and dumb impact sensors.

Many driving schools now teach holding the steering wheel at 4 and 8 o'clock to prevent arm injury during a bag deployment. I'm not trying to imply air bags are unsafe but they can hurt you.

Bullwings

Yeah, especially when the designers don't read the "design inputs" correctly and decide that they're making a grenade instead of an airbag and have metal shrapnel fly at the passengers' face and neck upon deployment (explosion).

Also, fun video to support airbags being fully deployed prior to you hitting them.

DavidNJ

Apparently an issue because of third-party airbags available to collision and repair shops.

bgoetz