On August 4, 2007, an icon of American racing and my dear friend, John Fitch, turned 90 years old! In this day and age of medical advances plus many of us watching our diets and exercising, 90 is not nearly as unusual as in previous times. John, however has lived a life of achievement and adventure…and still does. At some 15 years younger, I don’t really enjoy walking very far with John because he tires me out. When I called a few weeks ago, he had just finished mowing his lawn.
On August 6, it was my great honor to host his birthday party at my home in Redondo Beach, California. I wish I could have invited all of you, our faithful readers, but as it was, my family was almost in revolt due to the numbers who did come, among them Phil Hill. Davey Jordan’s wife, Norma, brought the cake. Davey was John’s teammate at the 1966 Sebring in Briggs Cunningham’s Porsche 904. Bob Bondurant flew over from Phoenix to give John a copy of his just-published biography, Bob Bondurant, by Phil Henny.
For the past few years, John has attempted to set a new record at Bonneville in a 300SL, the same model in which he won the Touring Class at the Mille Miglia in 1955. Last year he was rained out, but he told us at the party that he’s going to try again this year.
I have never heard of a more active nonagenarian. Fitch was in Los Angeles to attend a Society of Automotive Engineers conference held in Hollywood on August 7. Fitch and Ken Berg presented a paper: “Are We Flat-Out for Survivable Deceleration? The 1955 Crash at Le Mans—Its Impact on Racing.” The following weekend, John was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame. This is a typical Fitch schedule.
Since the horrendous 1955 Le Mans accident, Fitch has been concerned with automotive safety. So concerned, in fact, that he has devoted much of his energies since his retirement as a race driver toward attacking some of the problems. His most notable achievement was the invention of Fitch Barriers, those ubiquitous yellow barrels gracing our freeways.
Ken Berg supplied me with a copy of his and John’s paper. I was told that after the SAE meeting, I could use some or all in one of my columns. I have tried to summarize and pick out what I think are high points:
“Auto racing has always been dangerous, both to participants and spectators. Death and injury is not a highly visible part of racing…until it happens. Drivers can professionally tune out natural concerns for survival. Their attitudes may have lulled those others in racing that might be expected to influence automobile and auto-racing safety—for everyone.
“Are we pushing race safety improvement as fast as possible? What are the restraints to going flat out for ‘survivable deceleration’? Can the inertia that is restraining safety development be overcome to produce advances in safety as great as those occurring in mechanical and electronic technologies in automotive engineering?
“I am not happy with the progress in racing safety. It has been harder to make progress in racing safety than it was for highway safety.
“All energy absorption that mitigates impact severity is governed by Newton’s Laws of Motion. They require movement or travel of the decelerated element over a distance. It is the one and only factor involved. Driver restraints, in-car cushioning and driver’s bodies, being flexible, compressible and extendable—all reduce the Gs that impinge on the brain, heart and other vital areas of the body. Incredibly no one in academia or engineering seems to be aware of this. If they are, it has not appeared in the press to my knowledge.
“My friend, USAF Colonel John Stapp, conducted deceleration tests in a 600 mph rocket sled and found 45 Gs to be the limit before the eye began to leave its socket.
“Mechanisms sufficiently sophisticated to exploit Newton’s laws and the limit of Gs will be expensive relative to the simple means developed to date. More complex devices, such as my Displaceable Guardrail that moves on impact and my Driver Capsule with greater travel than the HANS device, are the next steps to greater driver safety. I have done more than 100 development crashes.
“The response from racing bodies has been typically an expression of gratitude for my efforts, along with wishes of good luck from their attorney’s office, but expressing no technical interest or support, despite the outstanding success and visibility of the Fitch Inertial Barrier on the nation’s highways for almost four decades.”
I think that John’s views should be considered very carefully by all of us who are connected, in one way or another, with auto racing. In addition, everyone who drives or rides in a car—and that’s virtually all of us—should be eternally grateful for John’s dedication to highway safety.
