Ode to the Racecar: Improvements in Vehicular Safety Are Inspired by Racing

Racing has long been inspirational in the development of vehicular safety systems. With Top Fuel dragsters plummeting down tracks at speeds in excess of 330 mph in a quarter mile run, serious safety elements are essential.

Gleaning the benefits that years of research and crash testing provide, these top-notch safety features, then, make it into the passenger and commercial vehicle markets. But it's not just padding and good brakes that ensure most racers survive potentially fatal accidents. It's also electronics and ingenious automotive engineering. It's research, learning from every experience to maximize performance, and continually going back to the drawing board.

Wireless warning systems, for instance, alert drivers to a caution condition on the racetrack by transmitting a message from race control to a wall-mounted receiver or light. Designed to supplement a track's existing caution system, wireless warning systems allow racers to add additional caution lights at key locations throughout the track, such as at the turn and pit entrances, and near spotters. If the system is rugged and portable enough, it can be set up at different tracks for every race - providing coded messages for security, rapidly changing transmission and receiving frequencies to decrease the possibility of interference from other radios, and acting as a backup in case of power loss at the track.

While placing caution lights along the typical highway isn't realistic, wireless warning systems use concepts similar to lane departure warning systems and side alert systems now used in some passenger and commercial vehicles. These systems, too, attempt to warn the driver of a potentially hazardous situation through audio or visual alerts. When an equipped vehicle begins to sway into another lane, sensors in the side panel are activated and a warning is issued. When a potentially hazardous situation to the side of a vehicle occurs, another alert is issued.

Some technologies in racing are still providing inspiration to the rest of the vehicular markets. Accident data recorders are small, lightweight boxes mounted in racecars that record certain signals from multiple sensors at speeds of up to 1,000 samples per second. Monitored parameters can include wheel speed, throttle position, steering angle, tire pressure, three-axes acceleration and seatbelt loads. Sensors can be located anywhere from the accelerometers in the car's roll hoop to the driver's earpiece, which can measure forces on the car and driver.

Top-notch recorders can collect data throughout an entire drag race - versus older models that only record a triggering event and the periods before and after engine shutdown. The best are also modified to run off their own battery power - rather than add to the draw on the car's power system - and to store data in memory retrievable via a high-speed data link to a personal computer. This assists experts in assessing what was happening in a car at any given point during a run.

Accident data recorders provide information imperative to deciphering the hows and whys of track accidents. Data collected from these recorders have proven useful to car builders, track designers and engineers in reducing the severity and number of injuries associated with crashes. They have also been instrumental combined with medical reports, photos and video footage in determining if additional safety features could be beneficially designed and implemented. Such dramatic learning experiences lend their knowledge to the greater vehicular market, allowing automotive engineers to use this valuable data in making passenger and commercial vehicles safer.

Many of the safety systems developed for racing later find their way in everyday vehicles. So the next time you strap in for that morning commute, notice all the things that make you safer - and say thanks to automotive engineers who develop racecar technology.

Seed Newsvine

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