Quote:
Originally Posted by aussiemidgetfan
exactly. there is NO excuse for not wearing the best available safety gear! I cringe when I see people using bloody neck braces. Everybody in every class should be using the HANS/Leatt devices or equivalents. so to me, not wearing a full face helmet when you have explosions occuring in front of you is beyond stupid, it reaches the levels of idiocy.
And before someone starts preaching that it was like that in the good old days, frankly I don't give a monkey's bum about it. In their days, as safety was further understood, safety equipment became mandated. Hence the introduction of seatbelts, rollbars, helmets, racesuits etc. Same now. To go out in an open faced helmet and hanky is bordering on what I would deem as negligent.
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With all this new safety equipment, I've seen just as many broken necks now than I have before the Hans. I'm not in favor of the Hans, and I wear a standard neck collar. It gives me more protection for these kinds of cars than what a Hans does, and the full containment seats, no way, you can keep them. Seats that are made to "give" are going to make you feel better after a crash. I've seen those full containment seats actually break cars in a crash becasue they are so rigid.
When my dad's first sprint car driver started driving for him, he had a full containment seat, Hans, 300 layers of nomex, and the whole nine yards. The driver he has now, Suit, Shoes, Helmet, Gloves, and a standard seat. It's all in what you are comfortable with. Me personally, I don't like the Hans, but I do wear a 3 layer nomex suit, with two more layers of underwear, and I feel it keeps me safe.
It is in good fun, and I think its cool. I think some of us were brought up in the wrong age. I would have no problems at al hopping into a champ car back in the day with no rollcage. I think there was a quote from a while back from Jack Hewitt at an AllStar race in Florida, something about we should take the wings off, and Emick said something to the effect of it's a safety thing, and should we just take the rollcages off too and say screw safety as long as the racing is good? Nobody would run like that! When Hewitt replied, he said him & Haudenschild would, and I saw the picture somewhere of Haud holding a hacksaw to his car.
The whole deal boils down to you use what you find to be safe for you. If you want to wear an open faced helmet and a T-Shirt and feel safe doing it, more power to you, but you can't mandate something that I don't believe in.