Exactly Sean ,some bad situations have been avoided by being able to power & throttle on thru:drink:

yeah but first ya gotta have it then ya gotta use it

You don't know much about Unlimiteds...both cats and hydros run with their tunnels supported by ground effect airflow beneath the hulls and negative lift above from the airfoil shape on the deck. The technology you describe has been around for years in various forms on OffshoreCats, outboard tunnels and Unlimiteds, and , at times it has worked. However as previously posted most Offshore cat accidents are barrel rolls, not blowovers. This is even the case in most straightaway accidents, including the one a few weeks ago. The few blowovers that occur are at the really high speeds or from excessive trim angles.

T2x

They hurt as much as help...... Many drivers have been injured or worse when the parachute became intangled in the hull.........

They also created neck injuries when drivers bounced off the unopened parachute package as they left the cockpit, but before the chute deployed. This was greatly compounded when drivers forgot to attach the static line....or didn't bother to.

T2x

Reggie tried something like this on a skater he bought.

I saw it at a race and was checking it out I dont think they ever got it to work..

Not to mention, these have been replaced by capsules on drag boats, with much higher effectiveness the result.

Michael

To add to this, the system would not be preventing instability, but having to recover from it, a much harder task. The NASCAR example does not represent the cat situation, becuase the car is still on the ground, and the reverse flap just prevents the car from going unstable and airborn. Even an airplane can be unrecoverable from some unstable conditions. How many planes have plunged thousands of feet in a spin?

Someday it may be possible to build such a system, but it will take some extremely fast processing, and comprehensive programming for all the conditions that could happen: barrel roll, blowoever, trip and stuff, catching sponson, etc. I would think you would need one flap or wing on each corner of the boat. This would be harder than building an automotive stability control. The car is essentially 2D, and this would be 3D.

Michael

getting back to common sense... it's been a bad summer when racing, poker runs and performance boating are looke at as a whole. this is off the top of my head, but the summer started with an offshore boat slamming into an anchored barge at speed in the dark, several ejections and a roll at the harrison twp race, a recent head on at night, a couple high speed shore hits, 2 different cats flipping killing 3, the leopa ejection.. and thats off the top of my head without looking up anything. fancy gyroscope wings, air dumping venturies, and parachutes arent going to fix the problem. we have pleasure boats out there that are faster than most of the race boats, yet lack the safety features. everyone of these accidents effects not only the person involved, but negatively effects their family, friends, employment, coworkers, everybodie insurance premiums, and the sport as a whole as events are canceled, speedlimits enacted etc. we all like going fast and running hard, but collectively we need to step back for just a second,understand our capabilites and that of our boats and stay within those confines. if not there are cheaper and easier ways to commit suicide. we also need t look out for are brothers.. if you see someone running like an idiot, say something..maybe they are suicdal or maybe they just dont know how to set up their boat or how to drive it... maybe they just got a little carried away, we all get a little carried away at times, but that is the fastest way to actually get carried away to the hospital or morgue. maybe it's just me, but the accidents this summer seem to keep coming one after the other.

Not to minimize the deaths this year in our sport, but statistically speaking, the tragedies of our sport are but a miniscule blip when lumped into overall accidental deaths this year.

Taking our sport alone, about two people a day die in boating accidents. 70% of those deaths are the result of drownings due to no life jacket worn. So about 700 people in a year greatly overshadows the tiny number killed in high-performance boating accidents.

But lets take this a step further. 112 people a day die in traffic accidents. So in a week, cars kill more people than boats do all year. It gets worse- 1/4th of those deaths are young people 21 and under. 40% are alcohol related. So if we raised the driving age to 21 and outlawed alcohol, we'd save more lives in a year than die in boating accidents altogether in almost 30 years. And if we could get people to simply put on life jackets, well, you get the picture.

And accidental deaths are pretty far down the list. Heart disease and cancer get waaaay more people. If you really want to delve into it, the cheeseburger you had for lunch is way worse for you than running 130 mph on a crowded lake- not that you should.

and a good percentage of people who fall off boats, sans lifejackets...fall of the swim platform while taking a leak....