bar
Obviously something is better than nothing as far as safety goes. I was going to use a clevis pins to hold my cross bar on my cage and was talked out of it. I put the cage in for safety and not show and I wanted it as strong as possible. Safety was not that important when I was in my 20's. Now that I am married with 2 small children I am a little more mortally aware if you know what I mean. The only people riding in my back seat will be my kids so I welded in the bar. The door bars are a different story. They are bolt in and will only be used when high performance driving is on the menu.
To get minimum support on the main hoop it needs to be braced fore and aft. IMHO, a 4 point bar is mostly for show as you do not know how your are going to wreck and a main hoop with bars to the back is not as strong as having bars going to the front as well.
Take a look at my cage on the homepage under projects "King" or I can shoot you some pics.
As far as the using a 4 point harness with out a roll bar. I believe there is a concern for compressing the spine in an accident due to the belts being mounted so low (to the back seat or floor) it forces you down into the seat instead of keeping you from moving forward.
There are people here with a lot more exprience then myself. Most of my information comes from a guy that builds NASCAR cages where you need to walk away from a 200 mph crash. I am sure that Steve would have some thoughts on safety after his crash.
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