27 replies to this topic

[jez6363]

This thread is specifically to discuss what safety improvements might be made to open top motorsport, both in hindsight at the recent Surtees and Massa accidents, and previous accidents, and things people thnk are unsafe.

Obviously, any safety suggestions will have to not sngificantly impact on the quality of open top racing, so sarcastic suggestions such as reduce the speed to 50km/h will not be appropriate, especially in the light of recent events.

There is a separate thread already discussing whether safety improvements should be made or not, so please do not bring that debate to this thread. You can find that topic here:

http://forums.autosp...howtopic=112407

[jez6363]

Here are my suggstions so far, as areas to look into:

- Review safety fencing and make sure it can cope with plausible debris - in particular, review every gap, to make sure debris going in car direction can not pass through the gap

- Review wheel tethers. They are an obvious problem, as was idientified before they were introduced a few years back - the issue is still there, and the tethers are clearly not working well enough. In particular, look into things like tethers that have 'give points' so that instead of a single hard jolt, they gradually reduce the speed of the wheel, to prevent them snapping.

- Auto deflating tyres. Some sort of system built into the wheel hub, such as an explosive bolt, triggered maybe by tether deployment, which blows a hole in the inside of the wheel rim, to make rapid deflation, so the wheels don't bounce.

- Review driver cockpits - in particular to either partially or fully enclose. My own suggesion is to have some sort of front to back curved hoops, from around the steering wheel to the roll hoop behind ghe driver) to deflect larger debris. There would also be a cross bar somewhere over the drivers forearms. For smaller debris, helmet improvements might be more appropriate than a fully enclosed cockpit, as that would bring in problems of visibility, especially in rain.

- Review helmets - Massa was lucky the spring hit the helmet and not the visor. Visors have to be clear enough to give active safety (ie let the driver see), but maybe they could be double skinned, and made of something tougher. Also maybe the eye gap could be made smaller. As the eye gap is smaller, the kinetic energy of objects tha are small enough to get through will decrease, and much more rapidly - eg half the frontal area could equal 1/4 or 1/8 the energy to be absorbed by impact points (depending on whether it deforms on impact or not, and how the load spreads away from the impact area - not going to work out the details here).

- Review signalling of debris - maybe make a system where marshalls can hit a button that immediately signals approaching cars to slow right down - to pitlane speeds for example. Yes - reaction times of marshalls, and false signals, might be a problem, but I think they would soon learn, and even tardy reaction times would have been enough for the cases we have observed recently. Drivers reacting to the signal might be more of a problem, if they have someone on their tail, but maybe there is a way to make it work.

[jez6363]

I suggested this after surtee's death - have an accelerometer/jerk meter on the helmets, triggered to an engine kill switch, that would stop unconcious full throttle trips to the walls.

Good suggestion from another thread. My cars cruise control has something like that - hit a big enough bump and it shuts off the cruise mode.

[jez6363]

Some wise words from Ross Brawn:

"We need to keep a perspective on it - from what's been seen last weekend and this, we need to have a proper study to see if we need to do anything,".

"We need to digest what's happened and understand it properly. "

"It is time to look at the whole thing and take a balanced approach. You can have covers or canopies but you have to be able to get at the driver and extract him if there is an accident. "

"And you don't want anything that collapses down on a driver. "

"It is something we will look at. In the history of F1 it is a fairly rare occurrence, but we must take it seriously and see what we can do. "

"If there's a need to react, I'm sure F1 will promptly. But we must make sure we don't do something that makes the situation worse."

[Spunout]

Simple: majority of serious accidents from recent years were caused by mechanical failures. Blown tyre, suspension/wing falling apart on its own, or something else getting loose.

- Mika Häkkinen/Adelaide (tyre)
- Michael Schumacher/Silverstone (brakes)
- Ralf Schumacher/Indy (tyre)
- Ralph Firman/Hungaroring (wing)
- Heikki Kovalainen/Barcelona (suspension)

The list goes on and on. You can even add Massa accident here.

Basically, make sure there is more margin in terms of safety; stronger parts that are less likely to fail on their own. Now, it can lead to debate about technological competition...but if you want to improve safety (without slowing the cars down), this is quite effective way to do it.

Edited by Spunout, 26 July 2009 - 11:19.

[jez6363]

Unbelievable, Alonso's wheel coming off, and the preceding actions of both team, driver and marshals was just unbelievable.

First, the mechanic should have told the team to stop the car (IF he knew it hadn't gone on right)
Second, the team should have seen what we saw, the spinning spinner,, and stopped the car as soon as it was clear the spinner was not right.
Third, Alonso should have pulled in once he saw / felt what was happening.
Fourth, the marshals should have black flagged him as soon as the spinner fell off.
Fifth, its so unforgiveable to lose a wheel that he should have been black flagged as soon as he was wheelless anyway, his race was done, and he was a rolling chicane for no purpose.

Instead we have a chunk of debris flying around the track again, and worse, a wheel bouncing towards pedestrians, and a slow car pootling round and maybe causing an accident.

I hope that is the end of wheel spinners for 2010 now, the added nothig to racing, and have just created unecessary safety issues.

[Touti]

We just saw a replay on TV of how the wheel came off the car. It "slowly" moved out of the axle and touched the barge board before moving away, it could have jumped right in the cockpit and hit the driver.

On another replay we also see on of the mechanics saw that something was wrong as the car was leaving.

I agree with the above post, he should have been stopped right away.

[jez6363]

We just saw a replay on TV of how the wheel came off the car. It "slowly" moved out of the axle and touched the barge board before moving away, it could have jumped right in the cockpit and hit the driver.

On another replay we also see on of the mechanics saw that something was wrong as the car was leaving.

I agree with the above post, he should have been stopped right away.

Yes, the wheel could have hit him - and much worse, a full speed driver could have hit the wheel and got injured or killed, and catapulted the wheel into the crowd.

Alonso just admitted on TV that he saw the spinner was wrong - surely that is not just a 'racing accident' - it is quite deliberately perpetuating a dangerous situation, caused by the team. If the wheel had hit another driver and disabled or killed them, then I would expect Alonso to be in the courts, and his team - not good for him or F1, and totally unnecessary.

And now we have Vettel doing a similar thing - he says somehing is broken in his car, its obviously the end of his race, but the team send him out and he carries on and does another lap.

I know they want to win, but there comes a point where its just gratuitous risk taking.

Edited by jez6363, 26 July 2009 - 12:58.

[BigWicks]

- Review safety fencing and make sure it can cope with plausible debris - in particular, review every gap, to make sure debris going in car direction can not pass through the gap

will already have been done and am not sure why you are mentioning this tbh

- Review wheel tethers. They are an obvious problem, as was idientified before they were introduced a few years back - the issue is still there, and the tethers are clearly not working well enough. In particular, look into things like tethers that have 'give points' so that instead of a single hard jolt, they gradually reduce the speed of the wheel, to prevent them snapping.

people keep saying this, but the forces in some of these crashes are just immense and its just not realistic to expect tethers to cope with the physical forces involved.

- Auto deflating tyres. Some sort of system built into the wheel hub, such as an explosive bolt, triggered maybe by tether deployment, which blows a hole in the inside of the wheel rim, to make rapid deflation, so the wheels don't bounce.

sounds like a terrible idea, the thought of that system going wrong and a tyre deflating at 190mph going through eau rouge makes me feel physically sick.

- Review driver cockpits - in particular to either partially or fully enclose. My own suggesion is to have some sort of front to back curved hoops, from around the steering wheel to the roll hoop behind ghe driver) to deflect larger debris. There would also be a cross bar somewhere over the drivers forearms. For smaller debris, helmet improvements might be more appropriate than a fully enclosed cockpit, as that would bring in problems of visibility, especially in rain.

again a horrible idea, you get a car rolling and you have a situation where these metal hoops and stuff are twisting and/or breaking off and going into the cockpit and killing him. nasty stuff.

- Review helmets - Massa was lucky the spring hit the helmet and not the visor. Visors have to be clear enough to give active safety (ie let the driver see), but maybe they could be double skinned, and made of something tougher. Also maybe the eye gap could be made smaller. As the eye gap is smaller, the kinetic energy of objects tha are small enough to get through will decrease, and much more rapidly - eg half the frontal area could equal 1/4 or 1/8 the energy to be absorbed by impact points (depending on whether it deforms on impact or not, and how the load spreads away from the impact area - not going to work out the details here).

again i can't blieve you are even suggesting this, drivers have a hard enough time seeing as it is, can you imagine how dangerous you are making things but decreasing their vision even further?

- Review signalling of debris - maybe make a system where marshalls can hit a button that immediately signals approaching cars to slow right down - to pitlane speeds for example. Yes - reaction times of marshalls, and false signals, might be a problem, but I think they would soon learn, and even tardy reaction times would have been enough for the cases we have observed recently. Drivers reacting to the signal might be more of a problem, if they have someone on their tail, but maybe there is a way to make it work.

wuoldn't have saved henry surtees and wouldn't have helped massa, why are you suggesting this?

[alfista]

I hope that is the end of wheel spinners for 2010 now, the added nothig to racing, and have just created unecessary safety issues.

Can you please explain how banning spinners will improve safety? Do you want to say that wheel have never came off the cars without spinners? I remember Nigel Mansell retiring from Hungarian GP in 1987 because he lost wheel nut. What had it do with spinner?
Plus I strongly disagree with a view that mechanical failures are the main cause for serious accidents. Human errors happen much more often. Drivers, mechanics (like Renault guys with Alonso today), engineers, managers, designers - everybody can make a mistake. And those mistakes are not that obvious. Remeber Kimi's suspension collapsing last lap at Nurburgring in 2005? Was it mechanical failure? No way. It was driver's mistake (flat-spotting the tyre) as well as team's one (not calling him in). These things are not so black-and-white.

[wookles]

Jez.. I have to agree with Bigwik.. you're proposals are off kilter and kinda strange.

I'm not really sure there is anything that can be done here, or needs to be done, unlike the 94 situation where we had obvious areas of improvement.
The risks of single-seaters and open cockpits will remain until they complete reform the formula.

I've always worried what would happen if a tire ended up in a cockpit and sadly we saw that recently, as the previous post stated, the forces involved are immense and loose wheels/parts of cars are always going to be with us. But that was really a one in a million chance what happened to poor Henry Surtees.

Unlike Rubens, i do believe in coincidence, there is no need to go crazy and introduce something needless right now. Time and money would be better spend on making the technology more reliable and stronger so failures like this happen less often.

[wookles]

Here are my suggstions so far, as areas to look into:

- Review safety fencing and make sure it can cope with plausible debris - in particular, review every gap, to make sure debris going in car direction can not pass through the gap

Already in place at every F1 GP track as standard.

- Review wheel tethers. They are an obvious problem, as was idientified before they were introduced a few years back - the issue is still there, and the tethers are clearly not working well enough. In particular, look into things like tethers that have 'give points' so that instead of a single hard jolt, they gradually reduce the speed of the wheel, to prevent them snapping.

Are you referring to the Surtees accident here? The technical rules regarding tetherss in F1 do no apply to F2. In fact I'm not even sure they have any in F2. (Can someone clarify)
I think everyone would agree that having as few wheels flying around as possible is a good thing but there is nothing that is going to be 100%. Some crashes are just too big.

- Auto deflating tyres. Some sort of system built into the wheel hub, such as an explosive bolt, triggered maybe by tether deployment, which blows a hole in the inside of the wheel rim, to make rapid deflation, so the wheels don't bounce.

I personally would never sit in a car that had explosive bolts in its tires.

- Review driver cockpits - in particular to either partially or fully enclose. My own suggesion is to have some sort of front to back curved hoops, from around the steering wheel to the roll hoop behind ghe driver) to deflect larger debris. There would also be a cross bar somewhere over the drivers forearms. For smaller debris, helmet improvements might be more appropriate than a fully enclosed cockpit, as that would bring in problems of visibility, especially in rain.

All this sounds horrible, what happens if the car is on fire.. the driver injured and a quick extraction is needed ? A cross bar over the forearms??? how are they supposed to get out if the car is overturned? Sounds like a death-trap not a safety measure.

- Review helmets - Massa was lucky the spring hit the helmet and not the visor. Visors have to be clear enough to give active safety (ie let the driver see), but maybe they could be double skinned, and made of something tougher. Also maybe the eye gap could be made smaller. As the eye gap is smaller, the kinetic energy of objects tha are small enough to get through will decrease, and much more rapidly - eg half the frontal area could equal 1/4 or 1/8 the energy to be absorbed by impact points (depending on whether it deforms on impact or not, and how the load spreads away from the impact area - not going to work out the details here).

I think everyone is agreed that Helmet technology has come along way in the last 10 years with lightweight, super strong helmets. I see no reason to review the item that obviously saved Massa's life. Well done Schuberth.. keep it up.!

- Review signalling of debris - maybe make a system where marshalls can hit a button that immediately signals approaching cars to slow right down - to pitlane speeds for example. Yes - reaction times of marshalls, and false signals, might be a problem, but I think they would soon learn, and even tardy reaction times would have been enough for the cases we have observed recently. Drivers reacting to the signal might be more of a problem, if they have someone on their tail, but maybe there is a way to make it work.

Are you crazy ??? The cases we saw recently happened in split seconds.... No marshall would spot a spring bouncing down a track towards a driver. If we had this kind of system every race would grind to a standstill everytime Kimi took somebody's front wing off!! (oops

[TimEaston]

Whilst any death is tragedy I don't want us to have a knee-jerk reaction that dilutes the racing. I want to know why Henry Sutees' death is getting so much more coverage, tragic as it is, than those two stewards that died a few years back wasn't that a wake-up call as well?

[Spunout]

again a horrible idea, you get a car rolling and you have a situation where these metal hoops and stuff are twisting and/or breaking off and going into the cockpit and killing him. nasty stuff.

Furthermore, we´ve only had few accidents where closed cockpit would have saved the day. True, two such accidents happened during short period of time. But how many cases we had where quick medical action was required? Even short delay would have cost the lifes of Mika Häkkinen and Rubens Barrichello, for example. Any kind of closed cockpit would inevitably lead to situations where the driver cannot be extracted in seconds, or even minutes. This really works far better with other types of race cars, that rarely get upside down or buried in tyre barriers.

Edited by Spunout, 26 July 2009 - 17:11.

[Touti]

In light of Renault's penalty for Alonso's wheel.

1: Ovbviously Renault didn't know BEFORE giving Alonso the go ahead that the wheel wasn't properly bolted but we can see on tv footage that as the car starts moving a mechanic notices something wrong with the spinner and tries to show it to others.

2: It was reported during the race on tv here in Quebec that Alonso said after the race that he noticed something was wrong with the spinner.......yet he didn't stop right away.

3: We recently saw Raikkonen drive with an exhaust boucing all the over the place.

4: Name your own similar example, there's plenty to choose from.

The point here is that in those cases drivers, teams and stewards knew that there was a danger and yet everyone ignored it.

I think that everyone has been playing with fire a bit too much in recent years and the events of the past two weeks show that although open wheel racing is much safer than ever before, it's still not 100% safe and that unnecessary risks should be avoided.

I think there should be a rule stating that a driver MUST pull over and stop his car whenever a part comes loose. This would obviously alleviate the danger of running with a part that can detach itself at anytime and it would certainly avoid inconsistent decisions by the FIA like the stupid one they just made.

Massa's accident was really a bad luck and an unforseeable situation as nobody knew RB's car was gonna break but imagine if it happened after the Brawn had ran a few laps with that spring hanging around and everybody knowing it could detach at any time ?

Edited by Touti, 26 July 2009 - 17:53.

[Greem]

Are you referring to the Surtees accident here? The technical rules regarding tetherss in F1 do no apply to F2. In fact I'm not even sure they have any in F2. (Can someone clarify)

Sigh.

F2 runs the same wheel tether regulations as F1, as was extensively discussed last week:

http://forums.autosp...amp;pid=3753369
http://forums.autosp...amp;pid=3752967

Jonathan Palmer also outlined this in at least one press statement and a couple of interviews after Surtees' death.

[jez6363]

will already have been done and am not sure why you are mentioning this tbh

As we have just seen with the Alonso wheel, there were several people in the line of fire - not sure why they were where they were, but they were there, and there wasn't much to stop them being hit. Maybe it was the perspective, but I don't think so.

people keep saying this, but the forces in some of these crashes are just immense and its just not realistic to expect tethers to cope with the physical forces involved.

You speak as an engineer? I suggest you have a read of the recent thread on wheel tethers, get a mechanical engineering degree, and then come back with an informed comment. Its obvious that more tethers could be used, to spread the load, or tethers made more shock absorbent. The only question is how to do it, and whether it is the best use of time to d it.

sounds like a terrible idea, the thought of that system going wrong and a tyre deflating at 190mph going through eau rouge makes me feel physically sick.

Yes - and so does the thought of a wheel falling off there. That in no way means you don't explore the possibility. If you recall, this thread is to discuss possible ways of improving safety, not to hear people just say do nothing.

again a horrible idea, you get a car rolling and you have a situation where these metal hoops and stuff are twisting and/or breaking off and going into the cockpit and killing him. nasty stuff.

We already have a roll bar above the drivers head. It clearly can be engineered to work, as it has been done already - though I guess you would have argued against that safety feature being developed too. I guess you might have argued against HANS devices as well - most people did, but now its widely accepted as an excellent contribution to safety, and the problems in it have been worked through and addressed.

again i can't blieve you are even suggesting this, drivers have a hard enough time seeing as it is, can you imagine how dangerous you are making things but decreasing their vision even further?

I can't believe you are saying it can't be done. Adding a second skin to a visor, making it some sort of double glazed type thing, would make a very negligible difference to visibility. It might even help, especially in the case of a wet race, because it would reduce the condensation problem - just like it does in domestic double glazing. And seeing out of double glazed windows is not exactly demanding, compared to seeing out of a single glazed window.

wuoldn't have saved henry surtees and wouldn't have helped massa, why are you suggesting this?

There were 2-3 seconds from crash to accident for Surtees. Not long, for sure, and it would have taken an automatic system to give fast enough warning. Still technically possible though, and done right could have saved Surtees. Knowing something is coming, even for 2 seconds, is a huge advance warning to someone like an F1 driver, to either slow or at least avoid something.

[pingu666]

the visors are extremely strong already

[Viktor]

You speak as an engineer? I suggest you have a read of the recent thread on wheel tethers, get a mechanical engineering degree, and then come back with an informed comment. Its obvious that more tethers could be used, to spread the load, or tethers made more shock absorbent. The only question is how to do it, and whether it is the best use of time to d it.

(disclaimer: I am not a engineer)
Have you seen the tethers that are used today? It's not one wire, it's lots of wires like a bungee cord. If you have access to Autosport you can see it here, http://www.autosport...ge/l_hun_4139-4

There were 2-3 seconds from crash to accident for Surtees. Not long, for sure, and it would have taken an automatic system to give fast enough warning. Still technically possible though, and done right could have saved Surtees. Knowing something is coming, even for 2 seconds, is a huge advance warning to someone like an F1 driver, to either slow or at least avoid something.

I have not seen Surtees accident (don't want to) but what if we had this fine automatic system and he had slowed down and what if the wheel had taken a different path in the air and when i bounced and hit him in the head where he was on the track? It will not change anything except the speed you travel when you arrive, but the likelihood of being hit in the head is still the same.
Also whats wrong with the current system where drivers slow down when they see the yellow flags or the debris from the crashed car? For reference look at Germany last year with Glock's crash.

/Viktor

[Villes Gilleneuve]

Two ideas: multiple hub bolts for wheels. In 2010, they are banning pit stops anyway.

Second: ban CF from suspension arms, spec only chrome moly steel, or a hybrid of both. CF has great strength, but only in certain directions of force. It doesn't take much to crumble the entire suspension with a slight wheel bang while racing. This is also why close racing is so difficult in F1, the suspensions are too fragile.

[pingu666]

they still will pit for tyres, and wheels still will sometimes come off. look at nascar....

[Villes Gilleneuve]

You speak as an engineer? I suggest you have a read of the recent thread on wheel tethers, get a mechanical engineering degree, and then come back with an informed comment. Its obvious that more tethers could be used, to spread the load, or tethers made more shock absorbent. The only question is how to do it, and whether it is the best use of time to d it.

I can assure you, many PhD level engineers were employed in the current tether designs, and these tethers have been re-designed. This is not backyard mechanics and "eyeballin' it".

The problem is that in some cases, the forces involved exceed any strength possible from any tether design. Also, while the hubs are tethered to the chassis, the wheels are not tethered other than by one nut, which can be cross-threaded. Unless you can figure out a way around F=MA, the only way to make things safer, is to make them slower.

[fanboy]

Yes, the wheel could have hit him - and much worse, a full speed driver could have hit the wheel and got injured or killed, and catapulted the wheel into the crowd.

Alonso just admitted on TV that he saw the spinner was wrong - surely that is not just a 'racing accident' - it is quite deliberately perpetuating a dangerous situation, caused by the team. If the wheel had hit another driver and disabled or killed them, then I would expect Alonso to be in the courts, and his team - not good for him or F1, and totally unnecessary.

And now we have Vettel doing a similar thing - he says somehing is broken in his car, its obviously the end of his race, but the team send him out and he carries on and does another lap.

I know they want to win, but there comes a point where its just gratuitous risk taking.

What rubbish. Id like to know how long you have watched motorsports because you are speaking about things that have been happening since the dawn of motorsports and been accepted, because they are a part of motorracing and the inherent risks.

[DEVO]

Can you please explain how banning spinners will improve safety? Do you want to say that wheel have never came off the cars without spinners? I remember Nigel Mansell retiring from Hungarian GP in 1987 because he lost wheel nut. What had it do with spinner?
Plus I strongly disagree with a view that mechanical failures are the main cause for serious accidents. Human errors happen much more often. Drivers, mechanics (like Renault guys with Alonso today), engineers, managers, designers - everybody can make a mistake. And those mistakes are not that obvious. Remeber Kimi's suspension collapsing last lap at Nurburgring in 2005? Was it mechanical failure? No way. It was driver's mistake (flat-spotting the tyre) as well as team's one (not calling him in). These things are not so black-and-white.

This is the 2nd time Alonso has lost a wheel on the same track by the same team... no need to look at another case (spinner vs no spinner).

[alfista]

Safety matters take very long to find the solution. According to Tony Dodgins it took seven years after Senna's crash to design new generation of helmets. Then it took three more years for those helmets to become compulsory.

[jez6363]

I can assure you, many PhD level engineers were employed in the current tether designs, and these tethers have been re-designed. This is not backyard mechanics and "eyeballin' it".

The problem is that in some cases, the forces involved exceed any strength possible from any tether design. Also, while the hubs are tethered to the chassis, the wheels are not tethered other than by one nut, which can be cross-threaded. Unless you can figure out a way around F=MA, the only way to make things safer, is to make them slower.

Sorry if i came across as having a go at the current tether design. Its obviously sophisticated, and much more so than they appear. But its also obviously not sufficient to the job that they were intended to do.

I am sure that the current design had a set of parameters it had to meet, which amounted to constraining the volume and mass of the tether, and also set standards it had to meet (as seen in the FIA regs).

If the constraints are relaxed, you can certainly simply for example double up the tethers, which would (almost) certainly reduce the number of breakages.

Just because they are good doesn't mean they cannot be made better.

[jez6363]

I have not seen Surtees accident (don't want to) but what if we had this fine automatic system and he had slowed down and what if the wheel had taken a different path in the air and when i bounced and hit him in the head where he was on the track? It will not change anything except the speed you travel when you arrive, but the likelihood of being hit in the head is still the same.
Also whats wrong with the current system where drivers slow down when they see the yellow flags or the debris from the crashed car? For reference look at Germany last year with Glock's crash.

/Viktor

The difference between being hit by a wheel at 150mph and 50mph is vast. The car speed was the problem for Surtees, not the wheel speed, as that was moving pretty slowly when it hit him. Same for Massa - the spring was not moving that fast, but Massa's car was. In both cases, IF they could have slowed, even by just 50mph, they would have been much less likely to be serious accidents. The energy involved is proportional to the square of the speed.

[jez6363]

Can you please explain how banning spinners will improve safety? Do you want to say that wheel have never came off the cars without spinners? I remember Nigel Mansell retiring from Hungarian GP in 1987 because he lost wheel nut. What had it do with spinner?
Plus I strongly disagree with a view that mechanical failures are the main cause for serious accidents. Human errors happen much more often. Drivers, mechanics (like Renault guys with Alonso today), engineers, managers, designers - everybody can make a mistake. And those mistakes are not that obvious. Remeber Kimi's suspension collapsing last lap at Nurburgring in 2005? Was it mechanical failure? No way. It was driver's mistake (flat-spotting the tyre) as well as team's one (not calling him in). These things are not so black-and-white.

It will be interesting to see what they discover about the Alonso wheel. The spinner coming loose could have contributed to the wheel coming off.

But the main reason I think they should go is that they make what is obviously a vital piece of an F1 car (holding the wheel on), and a vital procedure (chaning the wheel), more complicated, and more likely to go wrong. Its a case of keep it simple is best.

Also spinners have done nothing good for racing - they just contribute yet more downforce, and now everyone has them, they just handicap overtaking a bit more. When the first team discovered them - fine, good idea, and gave them an advantage. That is now gone, so they are just needless complexity in a very critical area.

I agree with you about human errors being the larger cause of accidents, it was someone else who said they thought it was mechanical. But both are significant causes though, so it doesn't really matter - both should be looked at, as and when things arise.