What a mess, in so many ways.

Here's the short version of how SFI works...

1. Manufacturer joins SFI - passing the cost on to you in the form of increased prices

2. Sanctioning body joins SFI - paying for said membership with your dues.

3. SFI tests and confirms that a sample of a given suit material sandwich meets a particular SFI specificaton

4. Manufacturer agrees under the SFI membership license that it will put tags only on suits made of tested material combinations (including color) - if it wants to sell different suits, it's back to SFI with more $.

5. SFI sells the manufacturer tags (as in, one for every suit that gets sold), passing the cost on to you.

6. Sanctioning body requires SFI certification, thereby guaranteeing that we have no choice but to patronize SFI member manufacturers and line SFI's pockets.

7. Most importantly - Manufacturer, sanctioning body, and SFI play a shell game with liability for your safety, paid for by you. (Elegant, huh?) I'll find and post it when I get home but SFI specifically says that a tag is NOT certification that a suit is safe, or that it will provide any particular level of protection in the real world - ONLY that the sandwich of materials has passed a particular test. The sanctioning body gets to say that it's "following industry standards" rather than setting its own, which might open it up to liability. However, the manufacturers have all kinds of disclaimers in their brochures, etc. that "auto racing is inherently dangerous, so if you burn up it's not our fault," and besides - they've followed the industry standards required by the sanctioning body.

8. The trade association functions - increasing revenues for all member parties - is only a secondary benefit. Isn't it? Yeah. It must be, because all three partners in the process keep telling us that all they care about is our safety.

Meanwhile, I can't wear what amounts to a funny car suit to drive my IT car.

K[/b]
Well done sir. However, this process works only in a rather static environment, i.e. when there is no pressure to improve safety and/or no one is coming up with new ideas. When such is the case, everything is reduced to a pass-fail commodity and the low-cost producer wins. True of any industry. Manufacturers who make cheap product love SFI; those who make the good stuff are not so enthusiastic.

The net effect of the SFI model is to hinder advances in driver safety. Allow me to pass along two examples, one real and one purely hypothetical, make-believe:


1. True story

Me, speaking to an Unnamed Executive of an Unnamed Safety Products Company, a UEUSPC for short: "I thought you were a big fan of SFI?"
UEUSPC: "I am publically, but not privately."
Me: "Why?"
UEUSPC: "I can't make a better product."
Me: "What do you mean?"
UEUSPC: "Well, we already have an SFI label, right?"
Me: "Right."
UEUSPC: "So let's say we have an idea for a fantastic new product. What happens if we spend tons of time, money and effort to develop this new product that blows away all the competition?"
Me: " You'd save lives and make tons of money!"
UEUSPC: "No, we wouldn't. It would all be wasted. We'd end up with the same SFI label we have now, so why bother?"

EDIT - it's implicit but not specifically explained above that if a manufacturer chooses to NOT join SFI, it doesn't get to participate in a portion of its target market regardless of how good their suits are.... there is zero disincentive for a manufacturer to drink the KoolAid. [emphasis added]
[/b]
Ah, but that is the part that is changing due to, ironically, liability.


2. A purely hypothetical, make believe example. Honest.

Let's say a safety product manufacturer works on a product for use outside of motorsports which protects "occupants" from head and neck injuries in extreme conditions. I'm talking conditions so extreme that racing doesn't even come close, at speeds racing couldn't touch, and that the application is so critical that funding is unlimited--hypothetically speaking, of course.

And let's say this product was successfully tested last week at record setting speeds because, well, this is just a hypothetical and that sounds kinda cool. After all, I'm just making this up as I go. Honest.

And let's say they take this king-of-the-mountain design to SFI and are told they cannot get a label because it does not meet the spec. When they discover they must detune their design to meet the lower SFI performance, their lawyers tell them, "Don't do it. There is too much liability in making an inferior design." So they don't do it, and drivers are denied a safer product.

Then things get ugly. Drivers want the safer product, their sanctioning body won't let them use it, drivers get hurt and sue the sanctioning body into oblivion. That's the second-worse scenario, behind the Feds showing up with RICO charges.

The SFI model is an asset to sanctioning bodies when it ensures drivers access to the safest designs available. When it doesn't, SFI becomes a liability--and sanctioning bodies know it. They don't need SFI; they can pick and choose what rules to apply and, frankly, SCCA does a fairly good job of this, from our perspective.