The Racing Safety Institute (RSI) and the RSI Comunity are two separate entities, with distinct functions. RSI collects, summarizes, and reports data from performance tests of racing safety equipment. The RSI Community makes recommendations to RSI about how to perform those functions.

The Racing Safety Institute strives to inform the racing public of the performance of racing safety products, through the presentation of summary safety equipment test results, from data provided by reseachers, manufacturers and other parties.

The RSI Community provides non-binding guidance to RSI, in much the same way as a corporate or industry advisory board works. Through Recommendation Panels ("panels"), the RSI Community issues recommendation bulletins regarding practices and processes applied to its operation, or pertaining to specific types of racing safety equipment (e.g., racing harnesses or roll cage padding).

The RSI Community was created to provide this guidance with complete transparency and without bias, to help further the RSI mission, in order to help racers make informed decisions about safety equipment and be safer when competing in the speed events that they enjoy.