HEAD AND NECK RESTRAINTS: ARE THEY FOR YOU?
 Here is the helmet with the centerlines measured out and marked like the instruction page described. Very easy to do. You find the center of the rear of the helmet and then they tell you how to measure to find the hook locations. |
I have been using an R3 head and neck restraint from Safety Solutions. You are beginning to see more Pro Class drivers wearing them or different versions of them. FINALLY! What were they thinking? They should have had them from the minute they came out, and the sanctioning bodies should require them for any racer who is fast enough to require a competition license.
I have heard every excuse in the book why someone won’t use a great product like the R3, the Hutch Hybrid or the HANS. It runs the entire normal race driver excuse list: “Too difficult to get hooked up,” “I won’t be able to turn my head to see the competition so I can drive the stripe,” “The cost is way too high for me, $900 for a piece of safety equipment?” “How many bad crashes happen at the drag strip? I can’t see that I would ever need one.”
 The trickiest part was lifting the padding just enough to get the attaching nut for the clip under the padding. Took about 20 minutes to do the helmet. |
The last statement just about covers it for me. “How many bad crashes happen at the drag strip?” If you are involved in one or know somebody who was, it was ONE TOO MANY!
Then the $900 cost just being too high? Let’s see, we don’t flinch if we need a new $800 converter and probably have $4,000 worth of spare parts lying around at any given time. Why not spend $900 to protect yourself so you can go to work and make more money to buy more spare parts? Don’t use the money as an excuse, it won’t fly in an already very expensive hobby.
 This is a rear view of the helmet and where the R3 fits when it is put on. |
These new and innovative head and neck restraints can not only help keep you alive but will help prevent neck and brain injuries. If you had a disabling injury at the drag strip and had to miss a year of work, think of the effect it would have on your family, your future and yourself. Of course, nobody likes to think about it, but the fact is it could happen the next run down the track.
My own experience with the R3 went like this. I ordered one and UPS delivered it. Rich Carroll from ISP followed up with several calls to see if I had any questions. The directions were very thorough and the instructions to mount the tether straps were precise. It took about 30 minutes to get the hooks for the straps on the helmet.
Next, I put it on and climbed into the dragster. “What’s that big lump in the middle of my back?” The R3 is about an inch thick and when I sat in my non-padded dragster seat it was like having a 2x4 down the middle of my back. Then I realized I had left the custom-made “back pad” in the box from Safety Solutions. This is a fairly hard piece of foam that is about 12” wide and about 16” tall. It has a slot cut out of the middle for the R3 to fit into. I had my son, Andy, hold the pad in place where it was most comfortable so we could mount it on the seat. I put some Velcro on the seat to match the built-in Velcro strips on the R3 and it was ready to use. The design of the foam pad is flexible enough to fit most seats and you could modify it if you had to. Now my back is against the foam and R3 fits in the cutout area and I can’t tell I even have it on.
