Detroit Free Press June 15, 2006

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This interesting report by the Detroit Free Press tells how Jeff Gordon survived a big accident last week, and the story of how safety products have evolved since the 2001 tragedies that took the lives of several NASCAR stars.

Photos shows Dr. Bob Hubbard, inventor of the HANS Device, with prototype and current models. Click to read entire story.

Survive this? Wear this!

BY SHANNON SHELTON FREE PRESS SPORTS WRITER
His brakes were gone leaving Jeff Gordon powerless as his Chevrolet careened off the track into the infield grass, only to hurtle upward at full speed into the wall at Turn 1 last Sunday at Pocono International Raceway.

A few moments passed before Gordon climbed out of the wreckage. He ended up with little more than a bad headache and frazzled nerves, calling the crash one of the hardest hits of his career.
"Between the soft wall and the safety gear, I never got knocked out and I was surprised that I feel pretty good," Gordon said at the time.
Watching the replays of Gordon's accident, retired Michigan State professor Robert Hubbard couldn't help but feel a sense of gratification. Each life saved continues to prove that the decades he devoted to the development and marketing of the Head and Neck Support, or HANS Device, was time well spent.

"Thinking that this could really work made me a believer and a fanatic about it," Hubbard said. "It's a dream come true. We are helping people."
All of the drivers in the Nextel Cup and the Craftsman Truck races this weekend will be using a HANS Device. In 2005, NASCAR ruled it was the only device that met their performance standards.

Five years after Dale Earnhardt's death, the HANS Device and other NASCAR safety measures have earned a new level of recognition. Since that crash no NASCAR driver has been killed on the track.

The HANS Device is shaped like a collar, fitting around the driver's neck with a yoke sitting on the shoulders. It's a light piece of equipment, weighing about a pound, made of carbon fiber. In a racecar a shoulder harness fits over the yoke to keep the device pressed against the driver, and tethers secure the device to the driver's helmet.

Hubbard, a professor of biomechanical engineering at MSU, took the knowledge he gained from designing heads for crash-test dummies for General Motors in the 1970s and combined it with a family member's interest in auto racing to develop a prototype. Jim Downing, Hubbard's brother-in-law, was a competitive racer and came to Hubbard after the death of a friend in 1981. The two would later work with John Melvin of General Motors, who helped lay the scientific foundation behind the device that would later become HANS.

Melvin, who serves as an adjunct professor at Wayne State's College of Engineering, had extensive experience with crash injuries. He worked at the Transportation Research Institute at Michigan and as a research engineer with General Motors' racing programs. His team at GM was the first to use in-car crash recorders to study racing injuries.
Even with the scientific evidence, marketing the HANS device proved frustrating. Some of the older NASCAR drivers resisted the HANS device, calling it restrictive.
"Racecar drivers, particularly at the top levels, got there through hard work and their knowledge of their car," Melvin said. "Particularly in a stock car, they can sense things through feel. If you're presented with a different package, you're reluctant to try it."

It took the deaths of notable figures for drivers to consider the device more seriously. By 2000, more NASCAR drivers willingly chose to wear a HANS, particularly after the crashes of up-and-coming drivers Kenny Irwin, Tony Roper and Adam Petty that year. Medical examiners determined that basilar skull fracture, an injury associated with violent movement of the head, caused their deaths. The HANS Device prevents the whipping motions that cause these fractures. "It made them realize that this could happen to anybody," Hubbard said. "Now it's safe to say that NASCAR leads the industry in racing safety."

Today, in addition to NASCAR, Formula One, Champ Car and Grand Am, among others, all require the use of the device.
"You can really affect people's lives with the products you create and the dreams you pursue," Hubbard said.