Jules Bianchi Undergoes Surgery

You have a point. But even if it was not the tractor what caused the harm this time, it could have been. If it was not safer to crash with a wall, they wouldn´t bother to pick up the crashed cars.

 

I´ve read that he did hit the tractor with the head and the helmet was damaged. But as t12 stated above, maybe the hit was not so hard as it seemed, I don´t know the details about this.

 

+1- His injury was movement of the brain due to impact. Period. Tractor, wall, fence etc. This can happen without a tractor. It cannot be engineered out. The brain will move.

 

It will move less if some of the impact is absorbed by the object being hit.
Why do you think that they design the walls as they do?

What the relative effects would be are uncertain but the odds are that a structure designed to mitigate the effect would result in less trauma are very, very high.

Perhaps we need a poll?
What would you rather hit? An energy absorbing structure or a tractor.

 

Migrated by making and taking the choice of speeding out of the drivers hands, however I got flamed for saying that.

You could also argue his team are as guilty of him speeding as well.

 

No one here has seen the telemetry on his impact. Its a guess. His injury is documented and is evident. A wall might help but the brain will move. Less or even more. He was going too fast and any wall has limits. I stand by my statement. The brain will move. The brain movement is the problem. You cannot engineer that out. The potential is there and he is the 1 in a _______________ put in a number. Id take a wall and the risk. Its never zero. He was at fault as painful as that is. The prognosis has not changed his fault or not.

 

+1

I don't even know how people can debate this. Head hitting solid metal part with 0 give vs a (double) tire wall where MUCH more energy is dissipated. No brainer IMO. We've seen countless drivers hitting tires/concrete at same and much higher speeds at the same angle and drivers walked away.

It's actually downright foolish to say he would've been in the same situation had he hit the tire wall instead.

 

The tire wall would've absorbed much of the impact resulting in less head movement. Would he have had a concussion? Almost certainly, yes. But he wouldn't be in the terrible situation he is in now.

 

Even if the tractor weren't there he could have still been badly injured or killed. The tractor was there for a safety precaution to remove a stopped car from the racing line. The tractor was not out of place. It wasn't even finished with it's task, it was still in process, and was moving. Unfortunate Jules hit a moving target.

 

Going by that analogy in this case the parachute was the yellow flags. They are there for a reason.

 

It'd be interesting to see F1 cars equipped with a panic button for the drivers that deploys a parachute. Dragsters already use them every race.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

An eject seat with a parachute like a fighter jet might be better. It can leave a trail of smoke as he descends that is the color of his team.

 

I don't get it.
Is the conclusion that there should be no safety barriers? No run off areas?
In this case there may be some driver responsibility but does that mean that he somehow deserves less protection?
The idea is to make racing safer and until someone tells me that given the choice they'd rather hit a tractor than a safety wall I don't get the pushback on the subject.

 

The point is that the track workers or the FIA is not to blame for this accident.

He was speeding (as in one of the fastest drivers out there) under yellow. That's the cause of the accident.

The tractor might have made the injuries worse or not or even helped the case. Hard to say either way without more data. But it is irrelevant as a point: If he had obeyed the yellow flags, he would not have aquaplaned off the track.

You could blame the team for egging him on to speed. But even that is of little use: in the end the driver makes the decision to speed or not.

 

The cause of the off is a given. The severity of the injuries are a separate matter.
Whomever decided to place heavy machinery there while a race was in progress, no matter under green or yellow, bears some responsibility.
I'll ask again, given the choice wall or tractor?

 

Why?
They had a yellow out AND the SC. What else do you want? Red flag because of an accident removal?

If he had obeyed the rules there would have been no accident.

As I said before for one it might not have mattered much because his injuries were due to the massive deceleration. Hitting a wall at a 90 degree angle with triple digit speeds would have likely resulted in the same injury. People talk about tires, but at that spot they were only like two rows thin. Not like MS in Silverstone or Irvine in Spa.

Also (and I seem to have to repeat this over and over as nobody seems to pay attention) the tractor reduced a lot of his speed by destroying the left side of the car. Also lifting the tractor into the air with the nose of the Marussia bled a lot of speed off the car.

Without further data it is hard to make a final call but there is a chance the tractor might have actually helped the cause.

To me the most shocking part of the accident is the insane speed he arrives at the scene with. The Marussia comes in like a guided missile. Hard to imagine an outcome without the consequences we have today.

 

LOL! Nice.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

David, read the Commission's report; it will clarify for you. It's is extremely extensive and detailed, examining all possible causes and whether the outcome would have differed depending on several alternative precautions having been taken.

 

Why is obvious.
Because drivers do dumb things and shouldn't be penalized by permanent debilitating injury for a lapse of judgement.

You're not answering my question. You're heading off track at a high rate of speed, for whatever reason, would you rather hit a safety wall or a tractor?

 

Like so many F1 reports it is B.S.
In this one incident it may or not have made a substantial difference in injury but having such heavy equipment in a place where it can be hit is negligent.

Bianchi's off might have been unpredictable but the idea that an F1 driver might over do foolish things isn't.

 

Why do people actually keep insisting that the tire rows where only 2 tires thick? Where the crash happened it was 4 tire rows thick. The thinnest part is 3 tires thick, and most of that is covered by another highly absorband wall.

Speed of the impact wasn't silly high; Burti and Kubica's crashes impacts where around 2.5x the speed. Both hit in the worst angle. Kubica hit solid concrete, his car not coming to a full stop is what saved him, his impact was 78G. The car travelling after the crash (dissipating energy).

Burti crashed into tires 4 rows thick and came to a stop very quickly, with his helmet breaking. It gave him a head injury and practically ended his F1 careeer. He was in a medical induced coma for 3 days and suffered seizures for many months after that. Helmet technology has since improved, as has F1 safety, especially how the car ''accepts'' energy through certain parts and dissipates of the energy, thus putting the driver under less stress during such an impact.

 

First off personally I'd rather hit tyres/wall than a crane, I hear what T12 is saying as in the crane/tractor given the angle he hit it, could have shed some speed of the car, albeit in a different manner than the wall, either way I figure a rather nasty outcome, given his speed, that is a debatable point.

But the driver in question was at a seemingly high speed when he hit the slow moving heavy crane, so to summarize the point being, yes I hear what you saying and yes given the circumstances, the tyre wall I'am sure would have been the prefered object to hit, but that option should not even be there IMO.

The fact is, he obviously has not been the first to speed under these conditions in what you could consider reckless under the safety flags and SC, and obviously his team I suspect did not exactly tell him to slow down, maybe the opposite, so IMO that is why I say take that option out of the drivers hands, because it has taken this freak accident to highlight the fact, that this rule has been flouted and circumvented for too long, will lessons be learnt from it, one would hope so.

 

If it can be done safely I have no problem with slowing them remotely. Better to avoid an accident than to survive one.

 

Agreed, but lets face it, if we can land a satellite on a comet that's been traveling for nearly a decade in outer space.....

 

Unfortunately not great news, keep fighting Jules.

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