I think the word "safe/safety" is being used in the wrong context here. To say that anything is safe, and putting your name on it, is foolish. Be it a battery powered whatever, for your child, a Monster truck, or whatever, your chair at your confuser, your TV recliner, can all be "hazardus to your health"! What needs to be done, is to look at making whatever it is, as "safe as possible", within realistic reason. You have to consider a lot of factors, and I doubt any two "professional people", will agree on everything. I have seen a lot of what I would consider "unsafe" race cars", the integrity of the material goes away with age, some quicker than others. Putting a date on seat belt/harness replacement helps, but if they aren't mounted correctly, is a factor. Like I said earlier, you just have to be realistic, and make it as safe as you can, we all know "open wheel cars" are just that, you are strapped to a missile, that at any moment could, malfunction, or collect a rock, or a piece of a junk car from a demo derby, and put your lights out. One night at Vernon, one of our Tq drivers saw a BATTERY coming end over end at him, and as luck would have it, it bounced up as he neared it, luckily it hit the uprite on his left downtube, and glanced off, but that would not have been pleasant, had it hit him. To say one is any safer than the other, is foolish, had he had a rock guard, it would have helped, but if it were mounted with wire ties, it would probably not helped much, that battery weighed close to 10lbs, so I doubt the rock guard would have slowed it much, but having the battery properly mounted, would have gone a long way in "preventing" this from happening. Like has been said before, in other posts, you take the risk, and share the responsibility, when you strap in. Bob
