Safety above and beyond the rules

[Richard Lewis]

I'm curious if any of your teams have done additional modifications to your FSAE cars to make them safer beyond what the rules require. We were lucky enough to have no safety incidents in the first year of our program, however, we are hoping to make a safer car next year. (hopefully without comprimising too much the other areas of the car) I'm just curious to hear what has been done for the competition in the past, to make these cars safer. (and perhaps taking home the safety award)

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UVIC Formula SAE Team

http://www.engr.uvic.ca/~fsae

[Richard Lewis]

I'm curious if any of your teams have done additional modifications to your FSAE cars to make them safer beyond what the rules require. We were lucky enough to have no safety incidents in the first year of our program, however, we are hoping to make a safer car next year. (hopefully without comprimising too much the other areas of the car) I'm just curious to hear what has been done for the competition in the past, to make these cars safer. (and perhaps taking home the safety award)

-------------------------
UVIC Formula SAE Team

http://www.engr.uvic.ca/~fsae

[David Money]

We did exactly what you are thinking about and got frowned upon by some of the judges. We had an battery operated onboard fire suppression system that sprayed both the driver and the engine. We also had a double hull gas tank that would dramatically increase driver safety during a fuel tank rupture. Beyond that we had a rollover inertia switch that would kill both spark and fuel delivery, foam inside our fuel tank that would deter from fuel leaking in case of rupture, frame rails that protect the drivers arms by forcing him or her to keep their arms inside the cockpit, a true Firewall that completely separated the engine area from the fuel cell via bulkhead, brake lines and wire harnesses that were run INSIDE the frame tubes to prevent damage from road debris. (Quite contrary to some of the other cars that we saw that had brake lines and harnesses running on the bottom and sides of the frame) We even had an FIA approved Schroth 6 point harness with a special feature that decreases the injuries to the driver in case of accident. It also featured a unique type of webbing design that was also suppossed to decrease the injuries to a driver incase of accident. Did we get a safety award? Nope. What we did get was told to get rid of all of that crap as we were "only carrying around a constant weight penalty with all that safety stuff". Regardless I will tell you this, when we saw the car at last years competition catch fire and burn we were all glad that we had our safety features. Saftey is a 2 sided coin. Saftey = weight.

[steve]

Leeds University always have a fire extinguisher fitted to their car at FSAE, and it often helps them win the safety awrd along with some money. For formula student, there is no safety award, so do you think they have a fire extinguisher then?