Jeep question

There was a fatal roll over accident today on a local expressway. Woman driving a Jeep Wrangler went into the median, rolled and died. Newspaper said she was wearing a seat belt, but the fabric top offered her no protection and she died as a result. I think it's been a long time since Wranglers were delivered without a fairly substantial roll bar. Is there much of a chance the bar collapsed, or is there more to this story? (I'm sure there is) How strong are these factory bars? Is the windshield frame a partial roll bar?

I've seen stock cages collapse on Wranglers that were busy rock crawling, but those I've seen typically have the usual big tires, heavy suspension etc... It isn't uncommon to see one poking around the 4000-4500 lbs mark, up from the mid-3000 lb weight of the stock vehicle. I'm not sure if the extra weight was what pushed it to collapse, but I do know that it's par for the course to purchase a better cage when you start off-roading seriously, not greenlaning or Camp Jeep-type stuff. I don't know how hard she rolled or how many times, but it's not crap. It's not all that incredible either. I assume it was a mostly stock Wrangler.

I wouldn't put much faith in anything written in a newspaper that requires more than a quick Wikipedia search. That's seemingly all any topic gets when it hits the papers (and similar TV shows and the internet etc...). Writers don't bother to find out what something actually is, so they perpetuate the same mistaken generalities that you'd find in the mainstream and not in the small fraction that actually knows the subject in depth. There's always plenty of hysterical, incorrect information. That's where "fabric top didn't provide protection" probably comes from. "What's on top of the Jeep? The cloth roof! Cloth isn't hard! That must be why the impact was bad."

on a TJ the factory bar is about 2" - ties into the windshield surround - basically a 6 pt structure. The rock crawler crowd will go with 1 5/8" or 1 7/5" tubes - but thicker than factory .120 vs .8ish. The hardcore expect to roll - sometimes heavily. Any vehicle flipping down the expressway will present you with a variety of ways to expire - like random debris entering the cockpit, structural failure, seat bolt or floor pan failure, internal injuries from structures not failing - seatbelts causing ruptured bladders are pretty common... coming to an abrupt stop - it's not the slide, it's the stop.

I wouldn't put much faith into a stock Jeep rollbar.

A stock cj rollbar probably saved my life once. Its sure as hell better than nothing and does what its supposed to do.

One thing its NOT supposed to do is prevent you from dying NO MATTER WHAT. In the rollover i had, if i had caught the tree stump or the fire hydrent on the windshield instead of the back wheel, its would have come through and killed me, but the rollbar DID prevent the jeep from going all the way over and just squishing me.

I rolled my CJ twice (2 different occasions) and the bar showed no issues at all. I agree with the rest of you, most hardcore Jeepers upgrade the bar. The stock one holds up pretty well in most highway accidents but it will bend in most situations but not collapse.

One more time Dave. Would you put much faith into a stock Jeep rollbar?

Kidding.

Just by looking at my 2002 TJ and seeing some rollover pics I would agree. My friend did roll his TJ in a field while doing donuts and the cage just bent a little. This was on dirt and it did one rotation and landed on the wheels.

I would rate them better than the bolt in miata "style bars" but not as robust as a Hard Dog rollbar.

I've been upside down in a YJ. It was lowspeed, but the bar and windshield frame held.

However, Look at where bar bolts in the back. It bolts to the top of the rear fenders. In the event of a high speed crash, that E36 M3 will bend.

Too be honest, when I rolled over, the biggest danger in my jeep was a big D ring shackle in the back seat that could have punted me in the head. It did not. I wonder if she wasn't hit by some sort of Foreign Object and the top couldn't keep it out... Like a street sign or something the edge of a jersey barrier.

The TJ bar isn't really a true six point bar, as the front section bolts to the windshield frame and can be completely removed so you can fold down the windshield. It's like a four point bar with benefits.

True on the bolt in - that's why the offroaders beef up the cage - but bolted in there is a structure. Either way, I'm calling it media hype and typical crap reporting.

I have spent a lot time on the Jeep forums although I have a Cherokee and not a Wrangler. There has been many a thread over there posting pictures of Wranglers after accidents and the majority of them are not pretty. Some are completely flattened and most are street accidents and not off road. Those stock cages readily deform which is why the hardcore Jeep guys consider it a must to beef them up or replace them all together with a stronger unit. My overall impression is don't rely on them for much protection.

The stock Wrangler 'cage' is built to the NHTSA rollover specs, just like the roof in any other car. That doesn't mean it's any good. With a couple of diagonal cross braces it would be a lot better, but that would interfere with the #1 priorities of car buyers: comfort and convenience.

As noted on the lawyer labels all over the inside of it, the Wrangler soft top offers zero protection against object intrusion just like any other soft top convertible. Honestly, the so called 'hardtop' on the new Wranglers is not much better, those plastic panels would punch through without much more effort than the soft top takes. Now, the old style one piece fiberglass hardtops were actually pretty tough, but still not as tough as a metal roof.

Also, whoever wrote that newspaper article is probably about as car savvy as the AP yoyo who wrote that Toyotas have problems with the electronics connected to the gas pedal and the fuel line. I kid you not, that is word for word.

I work for the company that supplies the body-in-white for the JK Wrangler, so I'm quite familiar with how the "Sport Bar" is tied into the body.

Like Jensenman said, it meets all NHTSA rollover specs, but that doesn't mean I want to test it personally. I also don't want to test the Hard-Core bar in my Miata, but I figure it's better than nothing if things do go wrong.

That being said, with so little information about the accident, there's no way to tell if it was a failure of the Sport Bar that caused the death, or if something else entirely contributed to the fatal injuries.

There's also no possible way to engineer a vehicle that can keep occupants safe in all situations, when there are limitless variables when it comes to accidents.

I guess this is why the corporate lawyers forbid us from calling it a "roll-bar". Hell, JK's don't even have a "firewall" anymore... Now it's an "inner cowl panel", for when someone eventually rear-ends a tanker truck and the family's lawyer deems the vehicle unsafe because the "firewall" failed to protect the driver from the flames.

Remember to, there are many ways to die in a roll over that don't involve a collapsed roll bar.

In my opinion most roll bars are too low, and let you grind the top of your head off when you're upside down. True, most people don't use their brains for much. But when you scrape several inches of it off, you just tend to die.

You flip a vehicle, you tend to flop around. People brag about doing things like unbuckling and crawling under the brake pedal in a roll over, but I've yet to see someone actually do it, and I've watched a lot of cockpit footage. So you flop around and get your arm ripped off under the roll bar, maybe a leg too since it's a Jeep and they come out of that fake cloth door real easily. Then you just bleed to death.

that is the difference between a jeep and say a Miata. The roll bars might offer the same amount of protection, but at least in a miata you have some sheet metal around you. In a jeep, you are really out there in the open.

I was sliding along on the drivers door when i flipped the CJ. I wasnt scared in the moment but i realized how dangerous it was, and looking back it seems even more dangerous. my head was about 1 foot off the ground. As i said, any old tree trunk or fire hydrent would have come right through and taken and my head off.

I know of two different people who each survived a nasty rollover in a Jeep CJ. One hit the median and flipped over end to end, the other rolled down a hillside in Taos. Both survived with only minor injuries. They are at least as tough as having a full roof over your head, if not more. But I think it is luck of the draw; people die in Volvos and survive in rusted out Fiats. If it is your time, it is your time I suppose.