A HANS device combined with a real tailfin would be a big leap in safety

[Franklin]

A real tailfin as in a BIG vertical stabilizer mounted BEHIND the gearbox. Even better would be a tailfin combined with a clamshell-type airbrake.

"...As tragic as it was, the recent accident at Walt Disney
World Speedway that left Indy Racing League driver Sam Schmidt paralyzed
from the neck down did not come as a complete surprise to Dr. Steve
Olvey.
Olvey, a critical care physician who serves as director of medical
affairs for Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART), said the open-wheel
racing community has been "lucky" that more drivers involved in the same
rear-impact collision as Schmidt have not suffered the same fate.
"We have known for a long time -- both in CART and the IRL as well
as Formula One -- from our studies with the crash recorders and the
types of accidents we've been having lately that rear-impact is the
biggest cause of cervical neck injury," Olvey said.
"We have had severe (spinal) fractures, but the sport has been
extremely fortunate that there hasn't been more paralysis. There were
two in Formula One (Clay Regazzoni and Didier Pironi) and those, to my
knowledge, are the only two in open-wheel racing since 1967."
Two, that is, until Schmidt's unfortunate accident Jan. 6 during
an open test session on the one-mile oval in Lake Buena Vista, Fla.
Although Schmidt's accident will no doubt bring the issue of auto
racing safety into the spotlight, Olvey said it is because of strides in
safety that Schmidt was able to survive such a violent crash.
"Most rear-impact (accidents) severe enough to cause cervical
fractures to the extent that they cause paralysis can also be fatal
because of a type of injury called the distraction injury," Olvey said.
A distraction injury, Olvey said, can occur upon violent
deceleration, such as in a crash. The force can cause the skull to
separate from the spinal cord because the driver's body is restrained in
the car and the head is propelled forward at the same speed the car was
traveling before it stopped.
"This has been the mechanism for a couple of the fatal crashes
over the last 15 years," Olvey said. "(Schmidt's crash) is the type of
crash that ... very likely may have been a fatal accident years ago but
because of safety changes in both CART and IRL cars, that has been
improved because of attention to the headrest, the padding in the seats,
the shape and design of the seats and the headrests.
"All these things have been improved in the cars so that the risk
of fatal injury has actually decreased -- although (CART) had two fatal
crashes last year."
The injuries that killed rising star Greg Moore and Gonzalo
Rodriguez in 1999 were not spinal-cord related.
While advances in safety have made open-wheel cars -- as well as
other forms of race cars -- more forgiving in crashes, technological
advances actually have changed the way open-wheel cars crash.
In the 1980s, Olvey said foot, ankle and leg fractures were the
most common injuries among open-wheel drivers involved in accidents
because the majority of crashes were frontal impact.
"What happened was that the cars, in the corners, were going at
slower speeds than they are now and they would do a complete 360-degree
revolution and then hit the wall frontwards," Olvey explained.
At that time, both CART and Formula One undertook measures to
strengthen the nose cones of the cars.
As speeds increased in the late '80s and early '90s, Olvey said,
he started noticing more hip and femur fractures because the cars began
going faster into the corners and spinning only about 270 degrees before
hitting the wall.
CART and F-1 responded by strengthening the sides of the cars,
adding energy-absorbing materials to the cars' side pods and drivers'
cockpits.
In the past five or six years, as speeds continued to increase,
the cars began spinning only 180 degrees before making contact with the
rear of the car, Olvey said. Hence the rash of rear-impact crashes.
In addition, because the cars are traveling faster, they scrub off
less speed before hitting the wall, resulting in a more violent impact.
"