Safety Cage and rollover protection rules revised for 2012

Safety cage and rollover protection rules revised for 2012

The current Schedule J –Safety Cage Structures regulations have remained relatively unchanged since the year 2000 when the last major review was implemented. Since that time the international regulations published by the FIA and indeed normal safety cage building practices have evolved significantly.

To adequately reflect the evolution of various safety cage regulations, to remove some ambiguities and importantly apply our experience in this area of safety over the past decade, a review of Schedule J has been undertaken which will be implemented for 2012. This involved an extensive process which has included the National Regulations Advisory Committee, CAMS Sporting Commissions and a number of industry members.

While the regulations themselves have been substantially updated, it is envisaged that there will only be relatively small changes to the way the majority of builders would construct a safety cage, particularly for sports and touring cars. The regulations have been tailored both to good contemporary practice and an appropriate minimum requirement for various events, which is already voluntarily exceeded in many cases.

Please note that there are only a small number of retrospective elements to the new regulations. One change that will affect most is the requirement for FIA or SFI standard padding in the head region to improve safety in this important area. A staged implementation through to 2013 will apply, depending on the status of event entered.

If you are in the process of constructing a safety cage, please ensure that you examine the regulations in detail to determine if there are any new requirements you will need to meet in the build of your safety cage. CAMS has produced a checklist which will assist in the evaluation of a safety cage design to the new regulations, which is available here.

Finally, please note that if you have a car being built at present which does not meet the new requirements, then it is important that the car is log booked by CAMS prior to 31 December 2011 otherwise the safety cage will need to be modified to meet the new regulations.