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Member Pessimistic about Improvement of Rollover Protection
There has been a lot of discussion in your website regarding rollover safety for motor homes. In addition, there is also concern regarding overweight conditions. In my humble engineering estimation, in order to create a protective cage for the passengers, weight would be added to include additional steel cage members. The dog is chasing the tail here. Even if you can build a safety cage around the driver's compartment, I seriously doubt that safety would be improved in a collision or rollover except in very low speed conditions. These vehicles just don't seem to me to have the capability for race car safety provisions. Paul Stakun, Connecticut
Our Response: In our research of rollovers, Paul, it is quite clear that the problem has nothing to do with weight. The addition of a cockpit roll bar and support of the cage at floor level and roof level would add less than 200 pounds to the average motor home. As an engineer, you should realize that it's an engineering problem. When automobiles used to weigh four tons, they were considered to be more unsafe than the two-ton automobiles that we are producing today. This has something to do with the weight-to-strength ratio. This may not be a perfect analogy, but it's something to think about. If you will study the stories again that the RV Reporter has been producing, you will see that many of the vehicles involved in rollovers simply fell apart. This will not happen with a modern car, van or truck. You also need to realize, Paul, that very few RV manufacturers have certified engineers on staff. In regards to speed, we believe that a vehicle should hold together in a rollover situation when traveling at highway speeds. The driver and passenger should have some reasonable chance of survival in a collision at speeds below 40 miles an hour. We know some RVs easily meet this criteria. However, too many RVs do not. |
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