Bumpers here to stay?

[Tim Arnold]

Originally Posted by Cory

I hope not--having bumpers practically invited teams to ram the heck out of each other.

contact that would never have been allowed last year was practically encouraged this year. At every one of our events we ended up with robots driving on top of the insides of our robot, and ramming our subframe.

Obviously we chose to lose some protection by not using bumpers, and we fully expected for the outside of our robot to be brutalized. We never planned on part of that loss of protection to mean the inside of our robot could legally be torn up.

Although I like bumpers (ours went through SEVERAL attachment processes as they kept breaking... I think the final way to hold them on was drywall screws (we tried concrete anchors, zip ties, bolts, wood screws, etc.)), there is a very interesting read about this subject on D*mn Interesting called "The Balance of Risk":

Originally Posted by DamnInteresting

What’s happening is a process known as risk compensation. It’s a tendency in humans to increase risky behavior proportionately as safeguards are introduced, and it’s very common. So common, in fact, as to render predictions of how well any given piece of safety equipment will work almost useless...

The article goes much more in depth. Good read.