If you are not yet using a HANS device.....

Consensus is that Dale Sr died from a basilar skull fracture, and his injury/death was one of the drivers (no pun intended) behind getting the HANS accepted.

Take a look at a piece Dr. Jim Norman wrote after Sean Edwards death last year.

http://blog.parathyroid.com/race-car-deaths-medical-causes-racing-deaths/

Jim Norman (the above author) has done a lot of looking into this - and he's a driver, like all of us. I believe it's in this article, but he had an admitted bias against the HANS when it came out. Mat Pombo, another doc and good friend that I race with, is also very involved in head and neck injury research, and is a huge fan of the HANS. My "Basic Sense" (used to be "common sense", but it's not so common anymore), tells me a HANS is a reasonable investment, to avoid risk. I'm don't wear magnets on my knees to make them feel better - I know of know mechanism that could be responsible for a correlation (assuming there is one) between magnets and improved joint pain. The correlation between a HANS and you head not flying off your neck is pretty obvious.

Greg's numbers got my attention - I'm a number's guy (and it drives my wife crazy, but she's an absolute saint, so she tolerates it). I have no idea how much displacement that the head can tolerate before it goes on it's own way without the neck, nor do I know how much restraining force the neck muscles can provide to stop the head from flying off it's God-given perch. I do know, however, that I can only lift about 45#x10 reps in the gym with my neck, so that gives me an order of magnitude.... and tells me my neck muscles may very well need help in the event of a crash in a racecar...

Referring to Jim Rice's crash (in the E36 ST car mentioned above), I was on track when that happened. I race in the same class, so I assume my speeds at T8 are comparable. Checking my AIM data, I'm at between 100 and 110 mph (161-177 km/hr). Assume the head/helmet weighs of 15# (6.75kg mass) (Greg's assumption, which I think is decent). The big deal here is deceleration time. If we assume two meters (~6 ft) to decelerate from track speed minus a bit to zero (you hit a stationary object, like a wall), that will happen in somewhere around 40 ms. That results in a deceleration of somewhere between 1000 and 1500 m/s/s. In rough terms, this says the head is putting ~7000N, or 1500 lb-f on the neck. I don't think I'm man enough to withstand that without a HANS. Check my numbers - I showed my work! (Greg - no partial credit for you). There may be an error there, but I'm not seeing it.

Obviously, there are big error bars on this calculation. Unless I made a mistake, though, the deceleration time is tiny, thus the deceleration, and therefore force, is very large. I'm always open to correction - this was kinda on the fly, but tell me where I'm wrong.

One way or the other, I'm sticking with my HANS (or next gen, randy, I'm good either way), and hope my racing friends do too. I like you guys too much to lose you to an avoidable injury. Not a scare tactic, just honesty...

dan
 
This topic is always good for at least five pages ... see this post from 2010.

http://www.icscc.com/forums/showthread.php?1416-Question-about-a-Proposed-Rule-Change-for-2011/page2

Bob Spreen is the Club Ford driver who credits the Hans device with saving his life when another formula car landed on his head at PIR a few years back.

Seems like a no-brainer to me ... or maybe that should be "a save-brainer".

Editing, because I found the other post where Bob talked about what happened to him, this one from 2011:

http://www.icscc.com/forums/showthread.php?1545-new-rules-for-helmets-and-HANS

I would be willing to bet that five years down the road, you'll be looking back at this after a HANS or something similar has been mandated, and it'll be just like seatbelts ... you'll wonder why you ever drove without one. Because if you drive without one, end up paralyzed from an accident, your wife/husband will have to sue Conference to try to get your bills paid, and the insurance company will look at everything ... including these posts ... and use it as an excuse not to pay. It's not money-grabbing lawyers that are to blame - your spouse won't be able to pay the monstrous medical bills they'll be looking at and will have no choice but to use whatever means available to try to find the cash necessary to keep you alive. And so while you are entitled to choose whether or not you wear one, it will have an effect on Conference as a whole.

Is it fear-mongering? Maybe. I'm a bit jaded because I've been part of the legal profession for the last 40 years.
 
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epsdan said:
Referring to Jim Rice's crash (in the E36 ST car mentioned above), I was on track when that happened. I race in the same class, so I assume my speeds at T8 are comparable. Checking my AIM data, I'm at between 100 and 110 mph (161-177 km/hr).

dan
Click to expand...

I wondered how much faster cars were along there than before the track modification a few years ago. I knew they were much faster, but never saw any numbers. I wonder about the fastest cars? I would guess that they must be over 140 along there.

Question for the class to consider. Ever take a close look at the construction of the wall and fencing? In some cases, the wall are attached to the big beefy end posts, in others, not. The walls sit on pavement or gravel. If not attached to the end post, the walls will slide, exposing the end post. Take a close look at those end posts sometime. They make a telephone pole look positively fragile. The ones that are the biggest danger in my opinion at PIR are at turns 3, 5 and the cross over at 8, not necessarily in that order. I would love to see the numbers from the BMW at turn 8 that has been mentioned. He came very near to finding the post. His crash has been performed a number of times over the years in that area, including by Don Roberts in his Comp. Viper, but the BMW is, I believe, the first big hit since the track modification. Numbers are great if you can get them.
 
DT Beemer sm.jpg

t8 @ pir
 
Robbie, that driver would have been Bob Spreen......and he was very vocal at a Drivers Meeting in Portland, while wearing his neck brace.
His Hans device compressed 1 1/2 inches from the downward force of his helmet. That would have killed him in a heartbeat, I believe, had it been his spine.
So all I'm saying, after reading this thread, about the chances of dying etc......this is racing, and none of us have seen everything a race car can do. And....about the time your car does something new and unique, and never seen before, you are its passenger and at its mercy.

They clocked the Porche and the Mustang at Portland last weekend at 144 and 146 mph coming out of Turn 12, when they reached pit out. Loose a wheel, have a mechanical failure, and hit the wall at that speed and wouldn't you be wanting every piece of safety equipment on you and in your car? (mandated or not)

Just sayin' and hopin' that there won't be a first time for everything.
 
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