The world of safety equipment has come a long way from the days of cotton overalls dipped in a mix of Boraxo and water to help safeguard against fire. With the performance increase in race cars, safety equipment has been advancing to meet the rising risks of higher speeds. It is mind-numbing to think about, but some equipment is now being certified to withstand 70 Gs of impact. The areas of priority in recent years have been the head and neck. More importantly it has been how to control the movement of the head and neck in the event of an impact and avoid basal skull fractures.

As with most aspects of drag racing, there are options are available to achieve the same goal. The same rings true in regard to driver safety. The two most prominent devices on the market today are the HANS Device and the R3 restraint system. The HANS Device has been marketed to the racing community since the early 1990s; the R3 is the relative newcomer to the market, having been released just after the turn of the century.

Both of these are widely used by many NHRA and sportsman racers. Both of these devices are SFI-certified and both have undergone much testing and refinement. The HANS (Head And Neck Support) began to take shape in the early 1980s when Dr. Robert Hubbard and racer friend Jim Downing began work on a device to help racers survive racing accidents. Patrick Jacquemart, a sports car racer and friend of Hubbard and Downing was killed testing his race car in 1981 at Mid-Ohio. The cause of death was a basal skull fracture. The two decided from that day to dedicate their time to helping other racers avoid that fate.

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Trevor Ashline is the man who developed the R3. He also developed the Hutchins device and has a long history in the world of automotive safety. He has taken his experience with the Hutchins device and other safety projects he has worked on to develop the R3 as something that he purports to be an improvement on existing technology.

Ashline said, “Our goal, when we developed the R3 was to design a product that would work from all angles of impact. The HANS is a well designed device for a frontal impact, but there are 359 other degrees around you where impact can occur.”

Mark Stiles, the CEO of the HANS Company refutes this claim, “We have seen no data to suggest that the HANS is ineffective in impacts from any direction. There has been no published data that shows the HANS to not be as effective from the side as it is from the front or rear.”

Both men agree that testing and developmental work is the heart and soul of the safety industry. Ashline said, “The R3 has really evolved over four years of testing. It is important to know that there is no intuitive way to predict how something will act on impact. If you think that you know exactly how something will move or happen on impact, it will never play out that way. We work with computer modeling and sled testing. We have run 21 of these tests this year alone. Many of our competitors have run none at all.”

Stiles also talked about the value of testing their products in the laboratory. “Sled testing is fundamentally the only way to test the device in real life. The dummies that are used are very advanced and teach us a lot, but they are not human beings. The amount of time that Hubbard and Downing put into development and testing is what gives us so much confidence in the HANS.”

The sled testing is just what you may think it is: an acceleration sled that stops with varying levels of quickness and violence. These are the best tests to demonstrate the real- world results that one can expect from a safety device. Because the R3 and the HANS are the only options for drivers who are looking for head and neck protection that meet the SFI 38.1 specification, these are really the only two pieces that one would see professional drivers using.

The HANS Device is available in 12 different models. “The drag racing specific model is the “Model 20,” said Stiles. “It is possible to wear, say a Model 40 in a Model 20 application. There would be no reduction in performance but it may be uncomfortable. The major difference between the models is the angle of the neck piece in the rear of the device. It is an ergonomically based difference. The device functions the same in all of our models.”

In addressing this issue, Ashline said, “Many of the cars in professional drag racing are difficult to get in and out of, especially for the larger drivers. The R3 can work in a couple of different configurations. Troy Coughlin has his attached to the back of his seat with Velcro so he can attach it when he gets into his car. The Funny Car drivers attach the device before they strap into the car. We then provide a special seat cushion that is cut out so that the R3 fits into it and the driver can get in that way as well.”

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Troy Coughlin said he really likes the device. “I always found that the HANS would move around if the car had a violent burnout or if it shook the tires. Once it moved it would become very uncomfortable and become more of a hindrance than a help,” he said. “This is a lot more comfortable and is much better ergonomically as a driver. I am more maneuverable with the R3 than I was with the HANS. The other thing that this device does a very good job of is keeping my head up when I hit the parachutes at the end of the run. I was always fighting to keep my head up to keep a good field of vision. After using this, that problem is solved.”

Del Worsham has been quoted as saying, “Hitting the parachutes at 310 mph is extremely hard on your neck. Before I wore the HANS Device, my neck was very sore after every race. Now that I’m using the HANS Device, my neck problems have virtually disappeared.”

It’s here that the two devices split paths in their philosophy. The HANS device is anchored to the drivers’ body with the seatbelts, whereas the R3 is strapped onto the body of the driver independently of the belts. Both manufacturers justify their choices of anchoring method differently.

Ashline said, “When the device is mounted to the seat in the manner that Coughlin has it, the Velcro will tear away when a driver tries to make a quick exit. The SFI 38.1 spec that was developed for these devices has a couple of different things written into it, one of them being the fact that no extra steps can be added for a driver to get out of the car.”

He continued, “There are guys out there who have been racing for decades, and the last thing we want to do is add steps to their exit process in an emergency,” he said. “If the only thing he thinks about when he gets out of the car is his hitting the belt latch and going, that’s what we have to design for. You want people working on intuition at that point, not trying to think about how to get out. Just get out of there.”

Mark Stiles refuted any implication that the HANS Device is dangerously or annoyingly restrictive.

“There are some misconceptions from people who have not tried the HANS. People seem to think that it restricts head movement a lot, especially side to side and that’s simply not true,” Stiles said. “The up and down movement of the head is not compromised at all and the user maintains 45 degrees of side to side movement as well. It is important to describe how the device works. In the event of an impact, seatbelts begin to stretch, sometimes in the neighborhood of five to ten percent. As that happens and the torso of the driver begins to move forward, the HANS stays with the belt and pretensions the straps as the belts tension up on the chest. This prevents a violent whipping motion and maintains the head and neck position.”

Made of carbon fiber, Kevlar and polyester, the R3 unit is designed for light weight and strength. The HANS follows this same construction philosophy, according to Stiles. “Drivers and Engineers are very concerned with taking weight out of the car. We can use high tech lightweight components to keep the weight as lot as possible but retain strength.”

Ashline said, “No matter if the driver is wearing the R3 while getting into the car or if he has it Velcro’d in, the hook up process is the same. The driver attaches the straps around his or her torso, the helmet is attached, along with the quick release lines. Two small loops slide over the ends of the seat belt tangs and are locked in the seat belt latch.”

Those two straps with the loops provide the anchor for the head load on the device. It is important to note though that in the event of a seatbelt failure, the devices effectiveness is not diminished, because the seatbelts do not anchor it to the body.

Stiles did say that the proper mounting of seatbelts has been an area of vigilance for the HANS Company. “We do not approve any dealers who do not provide trackside support and service to our customers. We want to ensure customer satisfaction and proper usage of the device for the best performance. Improper seatbelt mounting is probably the biggest problem in racing safety. We work closely with our customers to address and correct any mounting problems.”

Both Ashline and Stiles were quick to point out that it is not easy to develop a safety system that will pass tough SFI and FIA specs. Many years of testing were involved in getting the R3 and HANS to this point.

Ashline said, “Every trip we make to one of the few sled testing facilities in the country is expensive. With the costs to operate the facilities, the traveling, and equipment expenses, it is no small task.”

Stiles added, “The R&D testing of the HANS has been extensive over the 20-year period the device has existed. As an example, the straps we use have the ability to support nearly 1600 lbs, and we are starting to see test numbers begin to approach that level. We are actually testing with the military now on devices to help fighter pilots withstand the rigors of flying fighter jets and help them through the rigors of ejecting from one of those planes.”

Ashline has a long history in the safety business, designing OEM safety equipment for major manufacturers for Auto LV North America, the leading OEM safety company in the world. He worked on seat belts, air bags, and other designs for the company. His take on the safety equipment used in racing is non-conventional, “Normally we think of things in racing starting here and going back to the OEMs. The racing safety industry is the exact opposite: 100% of everything we have in racing came from the OEM and has been re-engineered to work in this environment,” he said.  

“The OEM companies have millions and millions to spend in testing and development. This is a smaller market. The tough guy mentality is still out there, more so in the drag racing world than in the NASCAR stuff, or the road racing stuff because neither the IHRA nor NHRA have mandated head restraints. NOPI has mandated them for its top classes and that is usually what it takes to make the major shift.”

Stiles wondered, “If a sanctioning body specifies a lot of other safety equipment, why would this kind of device be any different than gloves or a fire suit. It is all part of driver safety and all designed for the same purpose.

Developing safety equipment is different than anything else in racing. If a company comes out with a new connecting rod design, people’s lives and safety are not directly on the line, but with something that might save someone’s life and limb, the pressure rises. Although these two products are both competing in the same market, they both have driver safety at the top of their priority list.

“We have over 15,000 units in use today. We are very proud of our association with Dr. Hubbard and Jim Downing because they saw something in the 1980s that no one else saw,” Stiles said. The product worked the first time they designed it, but we have been refining it for 15 years now. We get a lot of pride out of the fact that racers are able to walk away from crashes that would have put them in the hospital without the device and they are able to get to work on Monday.”

LFT Tech and Safety Solutions can be reached at 1800 731 4404 (same number for both companies) or on the web at www.lfttech.com and www.hutchensdevice.com

More information on the HANS device can be found at www.hansdevice.com   

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