If the weight limits were originally introduced based upon good engineering judgement or a rule of thumb from industry best practice, or factual evidence then that's fine from a "reasonableness" or "duty of care" arguement in court of law.
If you state the reason is to "increase safety", there must be a safety issue (a cause) to be addressed by this mitigation, and the cause and mitigation both need to be based upon fact.
"...Reason: Safety Enforcing weight rules already adopted by all current Junior classes and new-for-2014 classes, as well as introduction of a Senior minimum driver weight for U16s. Addressing concerns over light drivers in heavy karts.
From a safety perspective, this all increases safety by limiting the potential weight of the kart in relation to the driver ...."
This last sentence is mitigation only. What is the safety issue of a light driver in a kart .... controllability perhaps
- may their foot not push hard enough on the brake when a braking situation is needed
- may they get fatigued during a race and not be able to turn a corner or run a kerb
These don't seem to be a primary safey issue to me, so I suggest it must be trying to address the situation of a driver being pinned under a kart.
So if the safety goal is to reduce the severity of crushing injuries, the driver is not exposed to static loads of greater than 2.5 times his weight .... then I understand some of the logic.
But in JTKM, and other sister classes, why is the kart weight only, not driver+kart weight as the (threat) static load ?. In my earlier posting it can readil;y be seen that the "incident" ratios in reality can be much greater..
Existing regulation section (U) "... Weight 17.29. The minimum weight limit is the combined weight of Driver, kart and engine with the kart in complete racing trim, as at the end of each race or heat ..." adds another perspective.
Here the rulebook has broken WEIGHT as the sum of the DRIVER, the KART and the ENGINE.
That takes us back to proposed rule (U) 15.2.4 "... the weight will be defined .... by applying a kart-to-driver weight ratio ...". So I take it then that this ratio EXCLUDES engine weight ?
The proposed U 15... rule changes are incomplete and ambiguous.
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