Quote Originally Posted by dave parker View Post
Ok, I will play the dick and ask "Why?".

The head and neck restraint has been around for years in various designs. If you have raced with NASA you have had to wear one for the last two years. If you have done any "pro" racing you have had to have one. So why the big push to stop it from being compulsory?

Is it one of the following reasons:
1. You don't want to spend the money.
2. You are too good of a driver so you won't crash and CERTAINLY won't get hurt.
3. You don't agree with the narrow choice of devices that are allowed.
4. You could never be "comfortable" in one.

As someone else in this thread has said the club (SCCA) is covering its ass as advised by its lawyers. Why is this a big issue? Do you want the club to be decimated by a lawsuit filed by a grieving family member and their shark lawyer that the club was negligent in its duty to compel its members to protect themselves against injury after?

Please share your reasoning with the rest of the group.

cheers
dave parker
Dave, to answer your question with a question; why should this be required? Where is the demonstrated need (in Club Racing)? I wrote a request to allow a piece of safety equipment on IT cars a while back, and the Fastrack response was "there has been no demonstrated need". So I'm asking now; have we seen deaths, or even serious injuries, that have made this level of protection necessary? They're asking people to spend $600-$1200 (or more) on a piece of safety equipment that nobody has shown a need for. That's my first beef with the rule. So maybe that gets filed under #1, but I think maybe we should make a 1.a. - "You don't want to spend the money on something that isn't necessary".

My second beef has more to do with the way SFI and HANS have handled this whole thing - the SFI spec by all accounts was written by Hubbard, and they have gone out of their way on more than one occasion to try and prevent other companies from marketing competing devices. When you're talking about a safety device, and you have a company out there trying to prevent other, competing devices from being available to consumers...well, let's just say that leave's a bad taste in my mouth. If I continue to race with SCCA after this year (I'm about 50/50 right now), and I do end up having to spend money on some device, I can sure as hell gaurantee you it won't be from HANS.

Lastly - and this wasn't one of the choices - the members of this club decidedly opposed the requirement for a mandatory H&N device, and even the CRB opposed it, yet the BoD decided to go against the member's wishes and institute the requirement.

That's my $.02