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Well with full respect....being in industrial engineering for 30 years and being flown 1/2 around the world to seek my opinions for FMEA (Failure Modes and Effect analysis) studies I think I have at least a "clue"...any safety system designed by man gets improved upon and upgraded as soon as something that was "NOT supposed to Happen" happens, Darrel Russell is a very good example of something that everyone knew could happen (a tire breaking apart and tail-whipping) but was not addressed until a low probability occurence quite tragicly took his life.

Fatalities happen in racing and in industry, it all comes down to "acceptable risk" and hoping the safety measures enacted are adequate to mitigate that risk.....upgrading those measures are often expensive (except DR's accident seems not so expensive and in a tragic irony now almost seems "common sense"....quite unfortunately from time to time the bar must be raised and there are always those who resist because of the expense of the redesign.

I'm sure may of you may be familiar that in Industry we use many "torque to yield" break -away bolts and nuts that are essentially double nuts where torque is applied to the top nut and it shears off leaving only the properly torqued bottom nut in place. That's only mentioned as an example of how often engineering must take the human error factor out of the equation but even that is only as good as its certification method.

There is no question in my mind that a wheel/wheel securing system could be designed with adequate strength for TF and F/C that would keep the wheel secure to a axle hub....it may not keep the tire on the wheel (another matter fro discussion) but it could certainly keep the wheel on the axle.

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