Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. In the early days of car racing,
Speaker 1: even a minor accident could be fatal. For example, Patrick
Speaker 1: jack Mart was killed at mid Ohio in one after
Speaker 1: a head on collision with a dirt bank. His car
Speaker 1: was left relatively unscathed, but Jack Bart ended up with
Speaker 1: a skull fracture that caused severe brain damage. A lucky
Speaker 1: for other racers, two of jack Bart's friends stepped in
Speaker 1: and created a safety device that has changed the sport
Speaker 1: of car racing forever. Those friends were Jim Downing and
Speaker 1: jack Mart's brother in law, Dr Bob Hubbard. The two
Speaker 1: decided to combine Downing's knowledge of racing and Hubbard's expertise
Speaker 1: in engineering and skull anatomy to develop new safety gear
Speaker 1: to try to prevent deaths like jack Mart's from happening again.
Speaker 1: The simple and effective invention they created became known as
Speaker 1: the hands Device short forehead and neck support. The hands
Speaker 1: device isn't like a car airbag, which inflates a cushion
Speaker 1: to stop the driver in case of a collision. Instead,
Speaker 1: the hands device proactively uses a raised collar and two
Speaker 1: tethers to secure the driver's head. In other words, it's
Speaker 1: a shoulder collar that attaches to both the car seats
Speaker 1: safety harness and the driver's helmet. In the event of
Speaker 1: a crash, it keeps the racer's head and neck properly
Speaker 1: aligned with the torso, preventing the type of excess force
Speaker 1: that would otherwise result in serious or fatal neck and
Speaker 1: head injuries. But it took years for the hands device
Speaker 1: to become a financial success, and unfortunately, it took the
Speaker 1: death of a high profile racer for NASCAR to take notice.
Speaker 1: When Dale Earnhardt, Sr. Was killed in two thousand one
Speaker 1: in a crash similar to Jack Marts at the Daytona
Speaker 1: International Speedway, the racing community, including NASCAR, finally took the
Speaker 1: hands device seriously. Now, most racing organizations require the use
Speaker 1: of a hands device for all drivers. The hands device
Speaker 1: is specifically designed to prevent vassal or skull fractures. Those
Speaker 1: injuries are caused when a car suddenly dec cceleerates. In
Speaker 1: Earnhardt's fatal crash at Daytona, for instance, NASCAR determined that
Speaker 1: he hit the wall going a hundred and sixty miles
Speaker 1: per hour. That's two hundred and fifty seven kilometers per
Speaker 1: hour and slowed by somewhere between forty two to forty
Speaker 1: four miles per hour about sixty seven to seventy kilos
Speaker 1: per hour in just eighty milliseconds. This sudden deceleration is
Speaker 1: known as the delta V, literally the change in velocity.
Speaker 1: While it's difficult to provide exact statistics on how many
Speaker 1: lives have been saved by the hands device, we do
Speaker 1: know this NASCAR, where certified hands are mandatory, did not
Speaker 1: have one single driver fatality in the decade after Earnhardt's death,
Speaker 1: whereas there were a hundred and twenty six deaths from
Speaker 1: crashes on drag strips and short tracks where hands devices
Speaker 1: are not required, and Hands estimates that of those hundred
Speaker 1: and six deaths as many, it's that's thirty four driver
Speaker 1: deaths could have been prevented by using the device, and
Speaker 1: no driver in an Indie car or an any of
Speaker 1: NASCAR's major series has been killed by a bachelor's skull
Speaker 1: fracture since it required the use of the device. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Trees three Witt and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Clang for iHeartMedia and How Stuff Works from around
Speaker 1: this and lots of other topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com.