Where do you drive and test your SAE cars?

[PedalOnTheRight]

We've been confined to the parking lots at school for a while, but are running out of real estate. Parking lots of local establishments, road courses nearby, and local streets at 3am are all options.

Where do you drive, how did you go about getting permission if necessary, and does anyone have any suggestions of how to get around business owners claiming that liability is too great a risk?

Thanks

[RKemmet]

We just had to do this again so I'll tell you what we had to do. Mostly it was the campus police that were giving us trouble about using the parking lots. They wanted written permision from Risk Management and from Parking and Transportation Services. So we did. We already had permission but had to get it writing. Anyways basically just talk to your risk management department, they have a lot of money in insurance and have to throw it arround quite a bit. So our clubs really aren't the biggest of their worry. Just tell them what you do and discuss creating an emergency plan, basically what you do in the event of a car accident and what your running procedures for the car are. Also look into getting a waiver you have drivers sign which hold the university and club harmless.

[muffrx4]

Hi guys,

Bit different in Aus, maybe thats why we go so fast compared to the other countries. We (as in all teams) have an understanding with the police that if we call 2 hours ahead they will close of whatever roads we ask for. At present we limit this to a 2 kilometre stretch of freeway and 2 suburbs.

hope that helps, I know it's different where theres lots of traffic but down here in the bush it's OK.

cheers

[Mexellent]

Originally posted by muffrx4:
Hi guys,

Bit different in Aus, maybe thats why we go so fast compared to the other countries. We (as in all teams) have an understanding with the police that if we call 2 hours ahead they will close of whatever roads we ask for. At present we limit this to a 2 kilometre stretch of freeway and 2 suburbs.

hope that helps, I know it's different where theres lots of traffic but down here in the bush it's OK.

cheers

THATS AWESOME!! All we have is a nice big parking lot.

Pedal, our advisor, Dr. Woods wrote a good set of guidelines for us to follow in case he is unable to come out to the track. Then we had to all sign waivers saying we had read the rules and if we failed to follow them we would be issued a citation by the campus police. Im going to see if i can get a hold of them for you. Or if Dr. Woods sees this before I get a chance to ask him, perhaps he can post them himself.

Anyway, once you get a set of guidelines down, you should go to the dean of engineering, or your advisor and tell him of your problem. He or she should know the right people to contact.

If your dean of engineering or your advisor is unable to help you, the next people I would contact would be your local autocross clubs. If anyone knows how to get permission to a parking lot, its your local autocross clubs.

Just be sure that when you practice, you dont do anything dangerous like acceleration runs towards a crowd or things of that nature.

[skokle]

Originally posted by muffrx4:
Hi guys,

Bit different in Aus, maybe thats why we go so fast compared to the other countries. We (as in all teams) have an understanding with the police that if we call 2 hours ahead they will close of whatever roads we ask for. At present we limit this to a 2 kilometre stretch of freeway and 2 suburbs.

hope that helps, I know it's different where theres lots of traffic but down here in the bush it's OK.

cheers

LOL! http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif That's all we need - more rumours about Oz.

[PedalOnTheRight]

Thanks for the help fellas.

I'm going to go talk with the dean and see if we can figure something out. Some investors need to make a road racing track in the Missouri/Kansas area. Basically, I want my own Nurmburgring.

PS. If we lived in the middle of nowheres (AUS) and had to only compete with koalas and kangaroos for road space, I'm sure the cops would oblige our every need!

[Garlic]

When the police close the freeways in Oz, don't they have to redirect the kangaroo traffic. Doesn't that cause a problem for the roos going to the zoo and tourist traps for work. I figure any blokes will understand it's for a good cause but roos aren't as reasonable folk.

[SnailRacer]

Has anyone went through the process of securing testing time at a non-university owned parking lot? As Pedal said, our universtiy lot is quite restrictive, but there's a few 'vacant' commercial parking lots in the area...

[Cody the Genius]

Our team tried to get authorization to run in a commercial lot and it mainly depends on who is in charge of the lot. The problem is that our school would not less us sign any non-..um ... the waivers that say that if you get hurt there you won't sue them, so we couldn't run at most places where their insurance required it. We did get to drive for a while at a lockeed-martin plant because the manager at the time was cool and that was awesome because we had nearly 24 hour access. However when that manager left the new one didn't like us as much so we left. Off campus driving seems mainly to depend on how much the other people like racing, almost the same as sponsorship.

[Psychosis]

we use a combination of places, depending on availability.

- an outdoor karting track - weekdays
- a haulage yard - weekends
- an airstrip - select evenings
- knockhill race circuit, large test area - select weekdays

the uni requires a risk assessment, and all venues have a photocopy of our insurance documents which should be available through your university. That's it!

closing a road would be ace, never asked the police, can't imagine them saying yes!

[72_chev_truck]

we test in the parking lots and we had permission from the security and a few other key people. We also mentioned the rules followed at competition would be followed as we tested and practiced. as well as having all proper safety gear... extinguishers i mean

[TomF]

Here in Delft the Uni does not have a large (reasonably surfaced) parking lot. Therefore we are always forced to go outside scholl terrain. Since road congestion was invented in Holland, it seems, calling the cops to close a road will give you a nice laughing person on the line, asking if you're calling from a mental hospital. So we try to look for (almost) closed airports, large long time parking lots, i.e. airports, or some small cycling tracks, but this year we can start testing at one of the parking lots of the Zandvoort track. However it is a 1hr+ drive and I do not like to see driving there for an hour just to find out a critical part on the car breaks and after 10 minutes of testing you can drive back to the shop...

But other than that, I would agree, that you just need to find some car/racing enthousiast with a lot of tarmac...

[RonBurgundy01]

As i have said in a similar topic lost somewhere on these forums, we at ballarat had been testing in a parking lot just outside the engineering wing at Uni. Unfortunately it is very cramped for space and only really allows enough room to hit 3rd, back off, spin around and do it over again. Not real testing! Then last weekend happened...

One of the guys was driving the car, he'd just started to give it a little bit of stick on a day that was a little cooler than most others. Spun the car, went backwards at 60kmh into a 4" concrete gutter. The damage bill is not one i really enjoy looking at. Bent arms, broken rims & centers, bent rear disk, broken diff mount among other things!

I have plenty of photo's showing the unfortunate damage if anyone is interested at learning what NOT to do!

Matt

P.S. The crash had nothing to do with Koala's or Kangaroo's either! Well done on knowing how to spell some of the native animals us "ossies" (as the yanks would say) have to deal with http://fsae.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif

[jdstuff]

To echo what Matt is saying....please make sure that the place where you are tesing is SAFE. Make sure there is plenty of run-off around the perimeter, and no major obstuctions in the lot itself.

We had a similar incident with last year's car. We were testing shortly after the '05 competition in a small parking lot we had just obtained permission to run on. An inexperienced driver was allowed to get in the car, quickly lost control because of a mechanical failure, and piled it into a cement pylon. I can't even begin to explain the feeling after getting that phone call.

So before you get all excited because someone has allowed you to use their property for testing, please reserve some judgement. It will certianly be better to pass up some testing on a less-than-adequate lot, rather than have to deal with an injured teammate or a totaled car. You will definately look at everything you design differently after a serious crash.

Just some food for thought...

http://gozips.uakron.edu/~jdstuff/7crash.jpg