WJ is certainly looking in the right direction with an NTSB-like investigation. I would believe there would be a lot of info available from other organizations which have already tested and analyzed data from these types of accidents thru mock-up tests or actual incidents. The auto manufacturers, NTSB, FAA, NASA, and the Military test continually test and investigate on impact and G-Force tolerance and survivability on the human body.
What caused Eric's accident I am sure will be found. What is needed for the driver to survive an impact like Eric had is a different issue. With the type of closed head injury that it was (DAI) this will be much harder to evaluate. As the velocity and time (i.e. G-Force) are the factors which would determine survivability.
Here is some a little info on deceleration G-Force and Diffuse Axonal Injury(DAI).
G-Force
Strongest g-forces survived by humans
Voluntarily: Colonel John Stapp in 1954 sustained 46.2 g in a rocket sled, while conducting research on the effects of human deceleration. See Martin Voshell (2004), 'High Acceleration and the Human Body'.
Involuntarily: Formula One racing car driver David Purley survived an estimated 178 g in 1977 when he decelerated from 173 km•h-1 (108 mph) to 0 in a distance of 66 cm (26 inches) after his throttle got stuck wide open and he hit a wall.[5]
Diffuse Axonal Injury (DAI)
Unlike brain trauma that occurs due to direct impact and deformation of the brain, DAI is the result of traumatic shearing forces that occur when the head is rapidly accelerated or decelerated, as may occur in auto accidents, falls, and assaults (reviewed in Wolf et al., 2001). It usually results from twisting or rotational forces (angular momentum), rather than forward and back impacts linear momentum (Sanders and McKenna, 2001; Wasserman, 2004; Shepherd, 2004). Car accidents are the most frequent causes of DAI, with sports accidents and child abuse also common causes (Smith and Greenwald, 2003).
The major cause of damage in DAI is the tearing of axons, the neural processes that allow one neuron to communicate with another. Tracts of axons, which appear white due to myelination, are referred to as white matter. Acceleration causes shearing injury, which refers to damage inflicted as tissue slides over other tissue. When the brain is accelerated, parts of differing densities and distances from the axis of rotation slide over one another, stretching axons that traverse junctions between areas of different density, especially gray-white matter junctions (Wasserman, 2004). Two thirds of DAI lesions occur in areas where grey and white matter meet (Wasserman, 2004).
God Bless Eric and prayers with Eric’s family, JFR, and friends