After a few weeks of smooth, calm rolls, taking the midsemester weekend off seemed to undo all of that with several spins and some scary crashes. On top of that a truck made it onto the course and an ambulance was called for the second time this year. Teams are moving faster and apparently drivers are still working on keeping their control through the chute in some cases, and in others drivers continue to race through or spin out while stopping for flags when they’re thrown. There are 4 potential weekends left for teams to make their move, but after a weekend like this, we are looking to see who returns and who might not.
EDIT: There has been some concern about inaccurate information regarding Spirit’s crash in this report and to that end we will making updates as more information makes it to us. If you have any information regarding the incident, please email news@cmubuggy.org so we can correct any inaccuracies. To this end, it is imperative that no one treat this incident lightly and we will not remove any information for the sake of making it seem less than it was.
In Attendance
| Org | Saturday | Sunday |
|---|---|---|
| AEPi | Kamikaze | |
| Apex | Phoenix | |
| CIA | Icarus, Orca, Ascension, Freyja | Icarus, Impulse, Orca, Ascension |
| Fringe | Bolt, Bissa | Bolt, Beacon, Bissa |
| PiKA | Banshee, Raptor | Banshee, Raptor |
| SDC | Vice, Malice, Rage | Vice, Malice, Rage |
| SigEp | Barracuda, Pandora | Barracuda |
| SigNu | Bungarus Krait | |
| Spirit | Kingpin II, Zuke, Haraka, Seraph | Kingpin II, Haraka, Seraph |
| Roboclub | Robobuggy | Robobuggy |
Observations (Saturday Gallery | Sunday Gallery)
AEPi – While most other teams seem to be working on improvement and continuing to raise the stakes, AEPi is quietly staying the course and keeping everything constant. While they don’t have the largest team out there, it’s a little surprising that they continue to coast on their one-day-a-weekend strategy. Could it be that there are some issues within the house that are preventing them from growing their team? Maybe they don’t see the benefit of rolling in the fall and are just going through the motions until spring. Hopefully we’ll see something more from the team that only a few years ago nearly broke into the top 10.- Apex – To our surprise and confusion, Apex was not seen on Sunday. We later learned that after her rolls on Saturday, Phoenix was showing some signs of fatigue in the area forward of the steering. They’re still unsure to the direct cause, but they chose to avoid further damage and started looking into a repair to get them out on the course. While we know Apex is working on another buggy for this year, it seems they could use a little extra finesse during the build since both of their last two buggies have now had some issues with delamination. Making a buggy as light as possible is only useful if they can make it through a year of rolls without falling apart.
CIA – Keeping it consistent, CIA continues to roll smoothly and quite speedily on their new wheels. We still have yet to see any other buggy use the neon green wheels aside from Ascension, so hopefully they give some other drivers the chance to see what better wheels feel like, or maybe they’ll shell out the bucks and get another set. Oddly enough, even at this point a few drivers are still using bags, sometimes far more than would be reasonable. We’re not really sure what to think about this unless they had some kind of driver swap going on and need to train a new one at this point in the season.
Fringe – Though they often roll with a smaller team of people, consistency is no stranger to Fringe this year either. This weekend we got to see Beacon return to the course with some interesting new fairings. It looks like they’re finally choosing to finish the buggy a year. And even though all Fringe buggies roll consistently well, their hill 3 pushers are still getting smoked and losing their pickup. The only thing that seems to still need work from a driving stand point is Bolt’s hard, jagged turn into the chute. While it hasn’t caused any spin-out or crashes, it’s definitely not helping them retain any speed through the turn.
PiKA – Now that Banshee has been out on the course regularly, PiKA is looking more like what they have in the past and are rolling well, though probably not quite as well as they could. Since she was late to the course, it seems only fair to expect that the new driver is still coming to grips with the course and will likely roll better as the season moves on. With many of the other teams having their own issues, the consistency that they are showing is more noticeable than it would normally be.
SDC – This weekend was almost a repeat of last raceday for SDC, though not quite as catastrophic. Malice managed to avoid crashing both days, but she’s been skirting very close to the bales with every sliding turn. Vice managed to spin-out both days, but only managed to hit the bales once. On her first roll on Sunday, she managed to avoid the bales much like spirit has done in the past and was allowed to roll the rest of the day without issue, but Saturday she made a hard spin into the bales and managed to lose some kind of tape-covered, foam wedge and similarly sized rubber mat that likely went under it. We’re not really sure what it was used for, but the pieces were claimed by the radio club member and given back to the team who hadn’t noticed they went missing. Rage also managed to spin into the bales on Saturday leaving only malice left by the end of the morning.
SigEp – While SigEp didn’t have any chute spins, they had the unfortunate situation of having a truck skirting the cones into Phipps and rolling right up at them on the course. The flaggers managed to have the truck park behind the monument before the buggies got close, but stop flags were still thrown and buggies forced to stop. Pandora was in front and managed to stop up against the curb after getting the chute stop flag. Barracuda for some reason was given the go flag for the transition letting her keep all speed into the stop flag before the chute. As we’ve seen many times before from this team, the driver slammed on her brakes and immediately lost control spinning around and sliding hard into the curb. Unexpectedly, SigNu was rolling with them for their last roll and anyone who ran to attend to the stopped buggies had to quickly move out of the way to avoid getting hit.
SigNu – Managing to avoid a crash, SigNu still gave a lot of people a fright as Bungarus Krait barreled through all stop flags right after SigEp had stopped just in front of them. She managed to make it through the chute and the pushers none-the-wiser continued to push her right up the hill, though to be fair, it wouldn’t really make sense for them to have done anything else at that point. While the driver managed to get through the chute without issue, ignoring a stop flag with two stopped buggies in front of her is a serious issue and could have caused a horrible incident in any other situation.
Spirit – After their early issues this year, Spirit had been rolling decently well with only a small slide here and there. Sunday saw that all change as rolls were halted halfway through after a terrifying incident from Kingpin 2. To those of us in the chute, it was eerily similar to Fuko’s crash a couple years ago into the street light after riding up the pedestrian ramp. Kingpin’s crash was much more mysterious though as she seemed to just launch up the curb right into one the concrete stairs and railings that lead from the sidewalk to the curb. As she hit the railing, her hatch was flung to the side and she was thrown forward in her buggy. Her harness seemingly did little to prevent her forward motion and from what we could see she nearly came out of the buggy. hitting her head on the railing.What might be the most frightening thing was the clearly visible helmet that is nowhere near the driver’s head. Hopefully this was done by the driver while she attempted to move herself out of the buggy.The driver removed the helmet herself as she attempted to extract herself from the buggy. EMS was quickly on scene and it was clear that things were bad when the cops pulled up and the CMU EMS truck showed up on scene with lights flashing. It was a short time later when a rescue vehicle also showed up, followed shortly by an ambulance who was able to make it through the Schenley bridge barricades. After last year’s major incident, having another one like this so soon, has all of us on edge.
Roboclub – Sticking to the twilight hours, Robobuggy has bounced back after their pusher incident a couple weeks ago and managed to get a couple more solid rolls under their belt this weekend. They’re still doing everything via a remote control from the follow car, but hopefully with all this data they should be able to figure out the autonomous stuff when spring rolls around. After a few years of planning to roll on raceday and then getting called off, it would be really neat to see them finally show off their hard work.
Course happenings
This weekend teams had to deal with more than spinning buggies. The city seemed to be working on tracking traffic patterns and speeds with long cables that straddled the road. There were two sets, one was just after the hill 2 push off and didn’t clear the entire road so most teams were able to avoid it. The second set was just before the stop sign and had no way to be avoided. To make things a little easier, a large mat was laid over the cables, but we’re sure that every driver still felt each bump.
What teams might not have noticed was the car that slammed into the barricade across the Schenley bridge, knocking it over. The Cop managed to stop the car before it had any chance of moving on to the second barricade.
bordick says:
I sincerely hope the Spirit report is wrong. The idea that a driver could be insufficiently harnessed AND insufficient helmeted is unconscionable. Two fractured bones, including a neck! The Sweepstakes Chairman and the Safety chair should heed this as a wakeup call and conducted rigorous safety checks, now and every day of rolls. A single incident like this could shut down sweepstakes forever. It’s not that hard to spend some time to properly install safety measures. Let’s get more info out on this, but it’s NEVER ok to skirt safety. EVER.
Glenn Philen says:
Former Chairman, Current Member, Spirit.
As far as I know the proper safety procedures were followed. Unless I hear otherwise, I would assume that my mechanics implemented our safety system correctly. She removed her helmet herself. It is not good to decelerate from 30mph to 0 in a couple of inches, as we learned last year with Fringe’s accident.
The doctors at UPMC have said that her prognosis is very good, and that the injuries were far less serious than is typical for he situation. We are all praying for her safe recovery.
I would wait until the team releases a report on the incident instead of reacting to hearsay. Posting pictures of the accident at this point is extremely poor form, and I don’t think it does anything to help and only serves to satisfy people’s macabre curiosity.
ben says:
Glenn,
Thank you for your response, we are in no way trying to oust any team for being unsafe. This situation was incredibly unfortunate, and much like the crash during raceday last year, she did not have the protection of the haybales that are there to soften the blow.
As for the pictures, I have removed the one that was originally posted until further notice, however the buggy community’s curiosity stems from an interest how the incident happened with a focus on future prevention. No one is looking for a driver to be injured or a buggy to be permanently damaged to the point of no return. We want to ensure that people are aware of the seriousness of these incidents and not to treat them lightly.
bordick says:
Glenn,
Thanks for getting more info out there. Like I said, I hope the speculation is wrong.
You said that we should wait until the team releases a report. Is that something new? I don’t recall any requirement to release any kind of report after an org has an incident. If that’s true, then we should wait. If there is no requirement, then there actually is value in posting pictures because it may be the only way that any other org may learn from these mistakes. Macabre curiosity will happen and we should try to minimize that.
However, I believe that the purpose of this alumni group is to continue to promote buggy as a positive experience for undergrads and alumni. Safety should be discussed, especially in cases like this. We, as alumni with concerned interest, may have something to add to the conversation. I will continue to stress safety in buggy because it’s too important to leave to chance.
One thing to be careful with is the medical information of the drivers. I believe HIPAA laws prohibit anyone except the injured party to release medical information. Hope she recovers quickly.
ab
Glenn Philen says:
Hey Bordick,
There is no requirement to release a report, but we believe that it will be good for the community to see what went wrong and what went well. These accidents are rare, and each one is an opportunity to make sure they don’t happen in the future. By studying what went wrong on Sunday, we can prevent it from happening in the future.
I can’t comment on how detailed the public one will be as far as photos of the buggy, as that is not my decision, but it will contain details about the course departure, and performance of our safety system during and after the collision, and design decisions that could have mitigated the accident. (e.g. a breakaway axle would have kept her on the pavement by not grabbing onto the hay bale.)
You are right to express concern for the privacy of the driver; that is why aren’t sharing anything about her specific injuries. I don’t know where you would hear any information about that, but it didn’t come from us. She is doing well and in high Spirit.
the Pope says:
Horrible accident. I hope she mends quickly. I recommend less speculation and more facts.
I will say that we have a disturbing trend of hard contact lately. Seems like we should take a hard look at a few elements to see if current safety systems are up to the task. I suspect they are not. Although my favorite rant is about front hatches and why they do not provide reasonable head protection, I would rather talk about how we can do a better job in making the course safer and leave the buggies aside for now. Not to ignore them but to point out a few easy steps that are less likely to invoke blamethrowing.
In this case, that bale just prior to the stairs looks like a good idea gone wrong. It is guarding something that I remember as a wheel swallowing hole. Preventing wheels from being swallowed by holes is a good thing. However, It looks like it also offers a goodly chance to hook a rear wheel on a trike ( or the front wheel on a reverse trike). Once hooked, the ensuing torque (counterclockwise) looks likely to aim the buggy to the left, in this case, directly at the stairs and railing. So, can we find an alternative that keeps the buggy out of the hole ( or whatever that bale is intended to block) that would have less potential to cause this sort of crash? Could a piece of plywood be designed to secure and cover the hole during rolls and races without offering as much of an opportunity for ruin? If not, how about more bales to guard what comes next if a wheel hooks the bale?
Come to think of it, I am not clear on why there is not a line of bales from the upper transition flag to the driveway at the potato chip guarding the outside edge of the course. Add in a few more to block the path to the monument and inside curb for good measure. Go watch a redbull derby video. It is hard fpor them to leave the course without taking out a dozen bales, seems to work for them. Yes, the course would be narrower and the chute turn would be different. So what? the benefit is prevention of a fast moving buggy from contacting a hard non-movable object directly For a fair amount of the chute, the bales would not be up against the curb and thus could eat more energy with less stress on the driver. As a bonus, it would be hard for a car to get onto the course from the bridge or other driveways along that perimeter. a line of bales makes a fairly obvious barrier when our current ones fail to garner attention.
Daniel Campos, Spirit Chair says:
After talking to the driver, and inspecting the buggy we have a more accurate picture of what happened. Her back wheel clipped the haybale covering the drain grate, the buggy then hit the curb with the nose and went up into the stairs and hit the railings. The windshield cracked and popped off. The driver was in shock and attempted to get out of the buggy herself, taking off her helmet and trying to wriggle forward before EMS could get to the scene.
The harness and the contact points didn’t fail and the protective cage around the driver (especially near the front of the buggy which covers her arms and hands) took the hit and did not collapse. She was loaded in properly and all her safety gear was on properly (goggles, mouthguard, helmet, gloves, etc). We have been working with Sweepstakes and the university to make sure all proper safety systems were in place. We invited this year’s safety chair to check our buggy and do a walkthrough to ensure the safety measures were indeed followed. The full harness goes over her shoulders and around her waist and was fitted properly. We use a harness with an industrial cambuckle and nylon straps (http://www.ericksonmfg.com/product/10000-lb-adjustable-tire-strap-wno-ratchet/) connected to the buggy by looping around the back axle at two points and at one more point in the front of the buggy.
We fully realize the severity of this incident for the team and for the sport and we share the concern the alumni have about safety especially since the events last raceday, and the incident earlier in this fall. And we resent any suggestions that we were trying to cover up or hide something. There is no requirement to release a report but we believe that it will be good for the community to know what went wrong on Sunday and how we can prevent it from happening in the future. The request to remove misleading information and a misleading image, which was posted in poor taste was made to protect the privacy of our driver as it showed our driver moments after the accident and in distress.
That being said we welcome a discussion about designs or changes to the course that could prevent anything like this happening again. There is a plan to place cones further up the course that are the same distance from the curb as the haybale so if a driver gets too close they would hit the cone first instead of a haybale. Perhaps some plywood covering the grate instead of the haybale could be used, and as Glenn mentioned perhaps breakaway axles would have prevented the buggy from going up into the curb.
the Pope says:
Terrific update. I have always felt that most spirit buggies (everything since QL) had a goodly design in terms of crash protection and was glad to see the new one undergo some rapid improvements last year to fit in with the rest of the flock. Why good? Even with no windshield, the driver’s head is not proud of the shell when viewed form the side. While not perfect ( given that the harness can and should stretch) it is a much better starting point for protecting the driver vs when the driver’s head is already proud of the shell. Hatches by their removable nature, are not as good as shell. Hatches have several weaknesses vs shells: 1 people forget to latch them, 2 people do not forget but fail to latch them properly, 3 the latching mechanism is likely not as strong as the shell and will give up easily under impact. 2 out of 3 of these weaknesses relate to people. People who are likely sleep deprived and worried about the 100000 other things. Shells on the other hand, lack these potential faults. Dear future buggy designer, this is not hard to implement. Think before you hatch. End rant.
I like the traffic cone idea but will point out that hitting one could also launch a car to the left. They pack more punch than you might suspect. They do a remarkable job in slowing down run away cars in soap box derby. They get trapped under the car or under the axle and grind against the ground, eating energy like a boss. The cars rarely take damage when this is happening. In this case the cars are moving at about the same speed (mid to high 30 mph) but are heavy (up to 300 lbs so ~2.5 times the energy vs a buggy). I would not have believed how much resistance the cones provide had I not seen it in action many times over the past few years. In Akron, like many other derby tracks, you have to use the brakes to stop after a run. Despite inspections that include an assessment of the brakes, they have been known to fail completely or wear to the point where they cannot stop the car. It is terrifying to see it happen and remarkable how well a few traffic cones work to stave off disaster. So, if we cannot put bales everywhere, we might want to add traffic cones in a few more places but note that they too could point a car in a different direction quickly. I am in favor if we also think about what happens if a car jumps the curb and put some bales in between the car and some rigid objects (trees, stairs, parking meters, railings, the monument). Buggies have been jumping that curb as far back as I can recall (early 80s when SN’s scorpion crashed hard there).
ben says:
Not sure the validity of this thought since I haven’t had the time to really think it through, but what about those little flatter cones that people use for kid’s soccer games. We’re not looking to stop the buggy here, just to alert it to potential danger. The flatter cones will have no affect on the buggy’s performance and should provide no chance of throwing it to either direction. These could potentially replace the haybale entirely since the road has since been repaved and the danger that the bale is protecting is nowhere near as bad as it used to be.
the Pope says:
good questions. Ideally, the safety harness system should keep the driver within the protective cage during impact.. We would want the driver to have room to move to allow deceleration as the harness eats the energy by stretching. However, most buggy designs do not have this room within the cage even when the harness remains properly attached at each end. Not sure how to fix that without dramatically redefining what a buggy needs to be. in a simple form, some minimum distance the driver can slide forward ( or backwards) before the driver and her bike hat leave the space defined by the safety cage or come in contact with a part that they do not normally contact ( like a fork or a bulkhead) . Not easy to define but likely important when you think about why we have a harness and what types of crashed happen.
shafeeq says:
Just this last year, we saw a traffic cone ruin SDC’s day, so they’re not much less of a hazard than the haybale.
There”s no end to the number of things to worry about hitting when a buggy leaves the course, but at least the parking meters are gone. The flat cones are used to define the track for inline races, and are generally not a problem to roll over, so I suspect they’d be fine for a buggy, too, but will a driver see them?
More concerning is that a driver was apparently seriously injured in a buggy with properly working safety systems. Yes, this was a freak accident, but how often do such things have to happen before they become something that the safety standards should account for? Note that a buggy spinning out under braking is in a similar situation of suddenly changing direction near a curb. 50% odds that you spin away from it rather than into it.
bordick says:
Daniel,
Thanks for the update. Glad to hear that she’s in good spirits (pun) and that most of the protective gear worked. I know in the past (maybe a long while past) that Spirit has impacted that bale before. It’s definitely a good idea gone bad and that should be looked into. Good luck moving forward.
Andy
dpow says:
Maybe if it was a row of 3-5 bales instead of just the one, clipping the first bale would throw you into other bales, rather then into the curb.
the cook says:
By my count that is at least four hard crashes with partial driver ejections in the last 5 years. Three of these were in the last 3 years SigNu, Fringe, Spirit, and the fourth was a few years prior during rolls, a hard crash into the bare inner chute curb(org?)
I personally saw that the harnesses failed in two of these crashes. One of these the harness itself split due to crappy or old stitching, and on the other the loop holding the harness was made of very light gauge material, many times weaker than the harness itself, and it ripped right in half.
Downhill skating contests in which I have participated always had many more bales than buggy does. As Pope suggested the bales often lined virtuallly the entire course, and certainly both sides of all corners. This prevents serious off-road excursions and direct curb hits.
A good start would be to double the number of bales.
the cook says:
the little cones about 5″ tall and 4″ base used for slalom skatebording and slalom inline skating are ideal for marking the course. They are made fairly rigid so they pop away when struck. Softer cones often got stuck under skatebords so the more rigid polyproylene cones were adopted. Just heavy enough not to blow away in 25 mph winds. I know there are supplies of these available reasonable.