Racing legend wants more passenger safety

A fiery crash at Michigan International Speedway in 1996 fractured Emerson Fittipaldi’s vertebrae and effectively ended his racing career. But the legendary racer says his race car’s carbon-fiber cockpit kept him alive that day, and consumers must be afforded the same protection.

Although carbon-fiber bodies on all passenger vehicles would be ideal, Fittipaldi concedes that the material, which is both stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum, is too expensive to mass produce.

That doesn’t mean that the idea is impossible. As Consumers Digest reported in its November/December 2011 issue, BMW will open a plant to make carbon fiber for its proposed i3 and i8 concept cars. If other manufacturers are slow to follow suit, Fittipaldi says, the electronic technology that race-car drivers have in their cockpits also should be put into more passenger vehicles. For example, Fittipaldi says he was impressed by the Chevrolet Volt and how a driver can choose different driving modes electronically, based on his/her needs in terms of performance and economy.

Fittipaldi is working with Jean Todt, who is president of Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, on a global safety campaign to reduce the number of driving fatalities. To do that, he says, race-car innovations must lead the way.

“The car that won the first Indi­anapolis [500] in 1911 was the first time someone put a mirror on the car,” he says. “You get a lot of new technologies” as a result of the extreme conditions of motor sports.