[PayneTrain]

The large number of bumper threads are indicative of a few things and it's subjective to say which of these factors causes the most strife.

-FIRST can't really figure out how to display bumper rules in the manual while simultaneously opening up and eliminating old, fundamental restrictions on the bumpers.

-Teams can't comprehend what the manual is trying to tell them because they don't really invest any effort into said comprehension.

-Bumper rules are inherently something that needs a lot of controls on them to cover all of the reasons the bumpers exist the way they do. They have to not only protect robots from other robots, but protect robots from the field, protect the field from robots, display the team number and alliance designation in a uniform location, and a tangential benefit of helping teams proof their robots for demos.

The best news I'm getting out of all of this is that questions are being answered in Week 3 of build season instead of Week 3 of competition season. We usually save the bumpers until much later than we usually execute on them (doing them now vs bag weekend). I know teams have set up bumper drives at events in the past; helping teams pass inspection with bumper kits and trained team members ready to fab and install them. If you are a team who wants to take the lead on it, please do so.