Helmets and safety gear (Page 2 of 2)

You know, we use to share everything.  Now with the sock rule, we've become less social.

Leatt for a period featured a variation of the brace specific for car motorsports called the "Moto R". based on it's design and self-supporting nature plus the ability to protect from the compression-type injuries at least in my opinion, if disregarding their test/descriptions was superior protection. Unfortunately I do not see it featured on their site anymore. However, some sites still have it for sale?

http://www.philsinc.com/leattbrace.html

I wasn't actually referring to the kart/motorcyle brace, although I'm sure that's their main market.

the Hans requires 2" belts which i don't like (means EVERYONE in the car has to share/have a hans) and the free/open design of it/the DefNder has me leery because I personally don't feel it protects from shock/compression-type injuries. I'm not a doctor, but I know that someone who has a neck injury, gets their neck put in a collar, not  have some bungies run across their forehead.

Just my $0.02

It's a pain to get 3" belts to sit right on a Hans, but it gets easy with practice.

You're right - HANS and similar devices don't protect the driver from a direct axial load (a load straight down on the head).  That's the kind of injury a foam collar might prevent, and the kind of injury you're alluding to in your comment.  What usually kills people is front to back whiplash type momentum or side to side sudden and severe movement of the head.  The collars that you see EMS putting on the injured do two things - prevent lateral movement and prevent front to back movement.  The reason the EMTs tape the head to the backboard is to prevent ANY kind of lateral or twisting movement along the entire spine.  The c-spine is the most important (after airway, breathing and circulation, of course), but the thoracic and lumbar spine are also considered.  The HANS does protect from both severe front to back movement (ie you can only go so far forwards or backwards) and side to side movement (which is why none of us can look too far right or left).

To be clear, there has not been conclusive evidence what the exact mechanism that has killed 9 professional race car drivers suffering basilar skull fractures since 1991 (the type of injury the HANS is designed to prevent).  It is believed by some it is the result of a violent whipping action of the neck in a violent front end colision, but some pathologists have attributed some of the 9 deaths to blunt force on the helmet from roll cage impact resulting in those fractures (blunt force on the mandible being the proposed way to suffer this fracture outside of motorsports). 

To say the HANS will protect your neck from other forms of impact (side ways forces, blunt forces, etc) is probably false.  I've actually had a patient suffer a C-spine fracture with a neck restraint device in place from a significant sidewards force.  He didn't have a HALO seat.

Having said all this jibberish... I wear a HANS.  Everyone on our team wears a HANS.  Seems like cheap insurance for one form of injury, even if the injury is very rare.  On the other hand, we don't have a HALO seat.  We probably should.

I would encourage everyone to spend as much time reading about personal safety gear as they do combing Craigslist for the next crapcan to win IOE.

Happy racing!

Last night my wife told me to get my ass over to the local racing store and get a HANS device.   She would pay for it.   Perhaps seeing the photo of "Sparky" Pete's MGB (which I'll be driving next week) doing it's mid-air flip led her to this decision.