[Dave-ROR]

Originally Posted by Ryephile

A fantastic idea for those that have harness bars, 6-points, and corresponding seats.

damnit IE crashed in the middle of my reply.. anyways..

I'm assuming you meant rollover protection there.

I use a HANS for W2W racing and occasionally for testing the race car. I do not use one for DEs in my street cars, autocross, etc.

A HANS device is just part of the overall safety solution. By itself it's nothing. IMO you have to approach safety from an all or nothing perspective (I'll explain).

I'll start with the nothing side. Stock style reclinable seats can collapse in serious rollovers. This, along with the design of OEM 3 point harnesses (seatbelts), is meant to better protect a driver in a rollover. That may sound wrong, but the way the seatbelt allows your body to move is down and to the inside of the car. That is the safest place without rollover protection. IMO stock seats are a horrible thing to use WITH rollover protection though. If the stock seat collapses/breaks, your body will now move freely right into large steel bars of the roll bar. Not ideal. Even worse with a harness bar if you use the harnesses on the street. Rollover and your head is kept in the perfect position to allow your neck and back to be broken. Let the OEM pieces work together as designed or go all out and do it correctly IMO (which greatly limits the cars usage on the street with a 4 point bar, or basically eliminates it with a cage).

Now for the all out route. At a minimum I'd run a 4 point rollbar, fixed back seats and 5/6 point harness. This would still allow street usage of the car (front seats only). For an actual track car I'd ideally run a minimum 6 point cage, fixed back seat with seat brace and the seat mounted to the cage, not the car (ie structure under the seat that attaches to the cage and with recent rule changes would allow welding that structure to the car body as well), 6 point HANS harness (should only be used with the HANS, since this car would no longer see street usage I'd run the HANS specific harnesses).

The HANS could be used with either the 4 point rollbar or the 6 (or more) point rollcage. It should never be used with any other setup IMO (and HANS will agree with that).

Too bad the DefNDer is gone, it was nicer than the HANS.

There are other systems that are more friendly for 3 point solutions that don't tie into the cage that would great for general HPDE usage.

The above also basically follows the safety standards we enforce at events I help run. We gets lots of bitching from the TT folks. We become the honey badger regarding their complaints.