Nascar press conference

[Lawrence C Leung]

The quality you've described is called "Impulse"  or J = F x t

more t, less F, therefore less effect on the "rider" (in these cases,
it's hard to called the person in the car "drivers".).

At street car speeds, the purpose of the Airbag is to increase t. Also,
not commonly known, but seat belts are supposed to stretch on severe
impacts, also to increase t. If the belts didn't stretch, they could
literally slice you in half. 

LL - NY

On Wed, 21 Feb 2001 15:23:00 -0800 Scott <Scott at thehinckleys.com> writes:
>At 18:07 21-02-01 -0400, Steven Addy wrote:
>>- Similarly noted by you are the non-deforming chassis.
>>- I don't know but I can't help but wonder why collapsible steering 
>...[etc]
>>
>>The man was killed because his neck/spine snapped because of the the
>>forward motion of his head when the seat belt stopped his body. It's
>>unlikely that anything you mentioned would've helped. The hans 
>device
>>maybe. Better design of the front end maybe.
>
>Wrong.
>The longer the crash takes the less force needs to be placed on the 
>body by 
>the seatbelt. With more time/distance spent deforming the body you 
>might 
>lessen the force on the body enough to prevent death.
>
>