In the shadow of the Jules Bianchi accident at the end of the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix, there has been some talk about how this issue can be prevented in the future. For anyone who doesn’t know, Bianchi has been in the hospital fighting for his life. He struck a recovery vehicle at a very high speed. The recovery car was attempting to remove Adrian Sutil’s Sauber, which had hydroplaned off of the circuit one lap prior. Bianchi’s car struck the rear of a crane, lifting the crane off of the ground, and struck his head on the rear of the tractor.
Safety has always been one of the FIA’s top priority and they have worked hard to prevent these types of accidents. It’s true that the sport has seen an extraordinary amount of fatal accidents in its history, but it is from these accidents that some of the world’s most important safety features emerged. After the death of the legendary Ayrton Senna, the sport was able to get the world’s leading engineers and was able to make Formula One a much safer sport. With twenty years of fatality free racing, F1 has gained one of the best safety records in the industry. Although it is impossible to completely eliminate the accidents, it was possible to reduce the amount and severity of these accidents.
Despite the best efforts, it is impossible to remove all risk from motorsport. Every time a driver straps into a car, they are putting their lives at risk. But that is a risk that these drivers are wiling to take, in order to do something that they truly love. Senna highlighted just how important racing was to him: “Racing, competing, it’s in my blood. It’s part of me, it’s part of my life; I have been doing it all my life and it stands out above everything else.”
So what can be done to prevent accidents of the same magnitude as that of Jules Bianchi?
In recent media, various sources have endorsed the use of a closed cockpit. There are two main designs for this: First, the standard clear roof over the regular cockpit. Second, the use of a solid bar stationed directly in front of the driver, used to protect the driver’s head in a front collision. However, the use of these safety devices may prevent more of a hazard than safety. In the case of the full roof, this device could potentially slow a driver’s escape time. If there is a hard impact to the roof, it may flatten; causing injury to the driver or it may become jammed and prevent the driver from exiting the vehicle. In the case of the front roll-over bar, this device would obstruct the driver’s view and in the event of it detaching from the body of the car, it could become a potentially sharp, spear-like projectile that could strike a driver’s head. It is clear that a closed cockpit car could cause more danger than it would prevent.
But if closed cockpit cars aren’t the option, what can be done to prevent another serious accident?
In my opinion, the sport is already at the height of its safety. The bottom line is that these serious accidents rarely occur and as with Jules Bianchi’s accident, they are not always predictable. You cannot protect drivers from an accident that no one can foresee. By adding more safety features to the cars, you also risk creating new hazards, as I demonstrated with the closed cockpit designs. It’s the idea that for every positive, there is a negative.
Of course, as with any accident, there is something that we can learn from Bianchi’s accident and some regulations that can be modified to prevent this in the future. Things like reassessing how much rain may be on the track before the race in red flagged, deploying the safety car when machinery is on the track, expanding the size of the caution zone under a local yellow or even adding safety guards to the safety vehicles to prevent cars from travelling under. These are just many of the ideas that have been put out in the open by fans.
As for those of you that are looking for someone to blame for the accident: don’t bother. Blaming people will not undo this terrible accident, nor will it help Bianchi. What’s done is done. The only thing that we can do is try to learn as much as we can about the factors that led to this accident and make changes to regulations to attempt to ensure that this never happens again. Formula One will always carry a risk. We can reduce the risk, but never eliminate it.
As for Jules Bianchi, I wish him a full and speedy recovery. I would like to give my best to his family, friends and loved ones, as they go through this extremely tough situation. I would like to remind the members for the Formula One community to respect their privacy. I have hope for Jules. He can pull through this.
Forza Jules.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
