Quote:
Originally Posted by Cd
Yes, but even without the cage there, you would be instead smashing your head on the metal frame of the A pillar.
It seems like a cage could be designed with enough clearance to not be so deadly in a crash.
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The A pillars today are designed to be far enough from the occupant that this is not really a concern. A roll cage is designed to fit inside of the rest of the car, so it by definition will be closer to you.
Roll cages are specifically designed to be part of a safety system, which includes a good supportive seat and very tight multi-point restraints.
You could design a cage with enough clearance to not be so deadly in a crash. It would be built into the rest of the car, and it would look a lot like an A-pillar, a thick roof, and so on.
A full tube-frame is expensive to make. A mass-produced car built with one would cost an obscene amount of money, at least with the way they are currently built. Perhaps in the future...
There was a trend in race cars for a while to make the car as strong and stiff as possible. It turned out that the driver then started taking all of the impact, which predictably wasn't so good for him. So they changed over to deformable structures which crush and dissipate energy that way. A lot of the race cars were built to practically disintegrate when they hit something hard enough, because each piece that left took some kinetic energy with it when it did.
Safety systems are indeed systems. They are designed to work together; when you just patch things together piece-meal you may improve things or may make them much worse.
-soD