Life in a wheelchair: It’s something many riders fear more than death itself. But each time we swing a leg over a motorcycle, we’re accepting an inherent risk of serious injury. However unlikely, the danger is always there, and we continue to come up with ways of protecting ourselves against it. The most recent development in protective wear, and also one of the biggest since the advent of the modern helmet, aims right at protecting the neck and spinal cord – the epicenter of vulnerability for life-threatening and/or permanently debilitating injury: the neck brace.

At the rate that neck braces such as the Leatt, the Alpinestars and the EVS are sweeping two-wheeled motorsports, we thought it was time to ask some important questions.

What is it that is compelling our industry to snatch up these pricey devices at an exponential rate? Will these devices really save our lives? Or are we merely buying into superstition in response to one of our greatest fears?

In this two-part in-depth feature, we set out to not only discuss, but scrutinize the different concepts of neck protection in the industry. We look into the background of the companies producing these systems, learn more about each one’s intended design, and investigate the research and development behind them.

In the second half, we’ll take it a step further and discuss the most common criticisms and greatest misconceptions about neck protection and spinal cord injuries. Do we fully understand what they are, as well as what they are not? Do we have realistic expectations as far as what they can and cannot protect us from? Are we wrapping our necks in a false sense of security? Are we in effect buying confidence off the shelf? What do we know other than what we’ve been told?

Especially for something touted to be a life saving device, we can’t be afraid to scrutinize what we know, question what we’ve been told, and ultimately make up our own minds on the concept of neck protection.

The Arrival

As a result of our growing sport, faster bikes and bigger tracks, we were all witness to a growing incidence of neck and spinal injuries. From the Dakar Rally to Supercross, heroes of the sport were falling: Ernesto Fonseca, Chris Blais, Doug Henry and even stars that had barely begun to shine like Ricky James. The need for protection against spinal cord injuries was apparent, but until three years ago, no one appeared to have an answer.

As we will go on to see, the argument over who had the idea first is open to debate, but there’s no question as to who had it to the market first.

Dr. Chris Leatt and the Leatt Brace arrived on the scene in 2006. The idea for the brace reportedly came to Dr. Leatt in 2001 after witnessing a motocross racer crashing and consequently dying of a C2 neck injury in his home country of South Africa.

“Within 30 minutes of that crash is when he came up with this idea,” Geoff Patterson of 211 Distribution explained. For Patterson, himself, the motivation to develop neck protection came five years later in a similar situation.

“I saw James Marshall break his neck on February 11, 2006 down in San Diego,” Patterson recalled. “Hence the name of this company – it’s 211 Distribution. I was in San Diego and I watched it happen with my 11-year-old boy sitting next to me. He didn’t get up and my son said, ‘Dad, is he going to be okay?’ And I said, ‘Buddy, I don’t think he’s going to be okay.’

“[Later that year] Ernesto Fonseca got hurt, then Ricky Carmichael had a really scary crash in St. Louis. People may not remember that, but he went head first right over the bars right on his head. He wasn’t injured, but it really scared him. It really scared us.”

Patterson got to work sketching his own ideas for a neck protection device, which caught the eye of eventual partner, Jason McCune, who came into Patterson’s auto body shop for an estimate.

“He saw that I was doing some drawings for things that would hang off the back of a helmet,” Patterson said. “He asked what I was doing. I told him and he said, ‘Well I heard about this website down in South Africa.’ I said, ‘Send it to me.’ The first thing I see is a picture of a neck brace up in the corner of the website. Within ten seconds, I knew that was the answer.”

Despite previous efforts, Dr. Leatt hadn’t had any luck getting his product picked up by a distributor in the USA at that point. “He had talked to Parts Unlimited,” Patterson said. “I believe he had talked to Tucker Rocky, and at the time, for whatever reason, they weren’t interested. Nobody wanted to get involved with Leatt in the beginning. They were afraid of it; they didn’t think it was going to go anywhere.”

So Patterson, along with McCune, teamed up with the goal of bringing the Leatt Brace to the North American market on their own. But infiltrating the motocross industry would prove to be a formidable challenge. Patterson recalls strolling through the pits of the Glen Helen national in 2006 trying to introduce people to the brace.

“I had a handmade prototype with me at Glen Helen and I carried it with me,” Patterson said. “I knew people were going to freak out when they saw it. Matt Walker looked at it and said, ‘Get that thing away from me.’ He didn’t even want to talk to me. I showed it to a couple of team managers; they wouldn’t even touch it.”

Leatt was met with much resistance in 2006, but a video that surfaced on VitalMX.com in February of 2007 was about to turn it all around. The video, of course, was David Bailey’s well-known “Stand for Something” speech. Through no reported affiliation with the Leatt company itself, the paraplegic motocross legend sat up in bed after a recent surgery and delivered a powerful plea. Calling individual riders out by name, Bailey practically wagged a finger at each of them, imploring them to recognize the responsibility they have as role models and challenging them to try out this potentially life-saving device.

Bailey’s emotional plea might have tugged at heart strings more so than providing a solid, logical argument for the Leatt Brace. But whether it motivated or scared more people into wearing the brace, it certainly had an impact. Almost overnight, there was a surge on the market and the Leatt Brace began to sell like wildfire.

The immediate and wide-spread demand for the brace challenged 211 Distribution to keep up with the pace. The wholly owned subsidiary of Leatt Corporation based in Valencia, California, got to work selling direct through a self-generated network of over 2000 dealers, moving 30,000 units in 2007 and 32,000 in 2008.

“After David Bailey’s video, our sales were increasing exponentially,” Patterson said. “The whole world logged on and it just blew up to where we could not stay on top of it.”

The industry waited to see if Leatt would finally be scooped up by a major distributor, but at that point, the company was happy to enjoy the spoils of its success the same way it was built – independently.

“If we turned it all over to distribution, we just become a product in the sea of 10,000 products,” Patterson said. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job so far. Because this product took off so successfully, we had no problem setting up dealers.”

Meanwhile, the same rash of spinal cord injuries that prompted Leatt and company to pursue neck protection hadn’t gone unnoticed by other companies in the business of protective wear (nor had the undeniably profitable market). Before long, there were glimpses of other neck protection systems beginning to surface. Alpinestars gave media a peek at their Bionic Neck Support prototype at a KTM ride day at Competitive Edge in 2007, which was remarkably similar to the Leatt in form and function. Rumors of a 661 protection system built into a chest protector were widespread. EVS was also quick to the market with the latest generation of their RC Race Collar, which featured a rigid frame.

Some Background

Everyone can agree that it’s just as impossible to replicate every type of crash as it is to predict them. For that reason, there are several schools of thought on neck and spinal cord protection. We sat down with representatives from Leatt, Alpinestars, 661 and EVS to hear about their concepts, and ask questions regarding their design: How does it work? What makes this unique and/or ideal? What was the inspiration behind developing this? What type of research and testing went into this design?

Before we open our discussion to criticisms, skepticisms and misconceptions of neck protection, read what each company had to say for itself.

Leatt Brace

They are the self-proclaimed originator of the neck brace. While origins of the concept may be open to debate, the fact remains that they were first to the market with it.

The Leatt Brace is designed to protect the cervical spine (C-section of the back) against five major causes of injury: hyper-flexion, hyperextension, lateral hyper-flexion, axio-loading and hyper-translation (whiplash).

Geoff Patterson explains the science of the Leatt Brace, “The natural form of energy, it always wants to take the path of least resistance. Chris Leatt created an alternative load path, and what happens is the energy goes elsewhere. It transfers through [the rest of your body] and goes through your legs or your T-section. In the case of axio-loading, that helmet locks into the surface of that brace. Now there is not ability for the head to roll forward, backwards. So if [your head and neck] can no longer move because it’s locked in, your legs are going to flip over that much quicker. You’re going to go into a different position that much quicker because now you can’t fold into your neck. If this can’t bend anymore, it can’t break.

“If you look at the footage of Trey Canard in Phoenix you’ll see alternative load path at it’s finest. As soon as the helmet locks into that brace, you can see it. He locks in and his legs come over. If he wasn’t locked in, energy would still be allowed to go forward in the same direction.”

Dr. Leatt took the time to perfect his product before releasing it, with a reported total of five years of R&D behind the Moto GPX.

“He would not let it go to market unless everything was right,” Patterson recalled. “And I mean little things – tiny things that were more cosmetic than anything. Biomechanically, he’s done study after study after study; this thing is exactly what it needs to be.”

While the other companies involved in this feature admit they have room to improve, Leatt has the utmost confidence in its current design.

“So far there has not been a breakthrough in different technology because [the original] works so well,” Patterson said. “Right now, they’re comfortable with the design and that’s why there hasn’t been much of a change to this point.”

This by no means indicates that the Leatt Corporation is resting on its laurels. In quite a substantial commitment to their ongoing research, the company recently purchased its own Hybrid II dummy, and is working on a second generation brace and adding products to complement the brace – namely a chest protector and back protector.

Replicating a crash on a dirt bike is without question much more difficult and involved than automobile crash testing. Still, the Leatt Corporation tests the brace’s ability to protect against what they’ve identified as five major types of neck injury.

“Hyper-flexion is your head going forward,” Patterson explained. “Hyper-extension is your head going back. Lateral hyper-flexion is [side-to-side], axio-loading is complete compression of the spine and the hyper-translation is your head going back, like whiplash.”

Patterson talked about the methods used at Leatt Corporation’s testing and research facility in Cape Town, South Africa, in which they attempt to replicate these types of impacts as realistically as possible, while also eliminating as many variables as possible.

“There’s a pendulum test which is where they take a hybrid dummy and hang it upside-down. And then they’re doing a superman test where they hang the dummy sideways and they swing it and they slam it into a wall. You can’t duplicate every crash; there’s no way.”

In response to the competition entering the market, Leatt’s latest ad campaign features a video titled “Why Leatt?” which demonstrates the five types of injuries. The company’s aim is to educate consumers as to why “there is no product that is anywhere near the level of protection that the Leatt Brace has.”

“Axio-loading, hyper-flexion, lateral, hyperextension, if you don’t have all those things in line, i.e., 360 degrees of protection, you’re missing something,” Patterson said. “And every [other] product in some form or fashion is missing some form of 360 degrees of protection. The Leatt Brace speaks for itself. Everything else aside, there is not a better product that will protect you from catastrophic neck injury.”

Alpinestars

Quite similar in design to the Leatt, but with a very different concept of protection is the Alpinestars Bionic Neck Support (BNS). Their aim is to protect against one thing and one thing only: catastrophic neck injury as a result of compression. According to years of their own research not only utilizing crash test dummies, but human cadavers as well, Alpinestars identified compression as the only form of impact that will likely result in catastrophic neck injury, meaning paralysis or death. In all other forms of impact, they prefer to let your body protect itself through its own natural movement.

“It only comes into play when compression is going to take place, which is the head compressing down toward the torso, or the torso compressing toward the head,” Tim Collins of Alpinestars said. “The way we designed this with the low-swoop neck, low-swoop back, and real thin sidebars is because we want to encourage movement to take place. We want the head to move out of the way of the torso naturally, if possible. Other systems that are out there might have really wide side bars; they may come up higher in the back, or come up higher in the front so that the helmet’s constantly in contact with it regardless of which way the head’s moving. This is really designed contrary to that in that the only time we want it to come into play is compression. Other than that, we want the head to naturally move out of the way because the only time the only time you’re really going to suffer a catastrophic injury – paralysis, death – is at compression.

“People ask, ‘If my head goes back, how am I protected?’ Well, your body naturally protects you by allowing your neck to flex way beyond your helmet touching your back. Although you’re going to have some ligament strain and some definite ancillary injury, it’s not going to be catastrophic.

“We learned all this by studying with cadaver spinal cords,” Collins continued. “We utilized actual cadaver spinal cords so that we could see exactly how much the head and the neck can extend and flex and move and whip around, and then how much it took for a compression to fracture or break the neck or the spinal cord.”

After coming up with their distinct concept of protection, Alpinestars took steps to design the BNS, which Collins explained: “We aimed to come up with something that contained a completely rigid frame but that also but that allowed maximum dissipation of energy upon impact. [The BNS] is a full-carbon frame which makes the system completely rigid and virtually indestructible. At the same time, all of these dense foam pieces, on the chest and on the back, are designed to break progressively on impact to help dissipate energy. It’s along the same lines of a MotoGP rider sliding on the pavement and that energy is leaving the body. If you stick your head straight into the dirt, your torso compresses toward your head and that energy doesn’t have anywhere else to go. But if that load has a place to go – either on the back or on the chest – then there’s less chance for a catastrophic injury to take place.

“The main frame is designed to maintain its integrity and withstand multiple impacts because of the rigid carbon design. The dense foam material, however, is designed to break or compress, similar to the inside of a helmet. (And of course, they’re all fully replaceable.) The energy that’s causing it to snap and fly away from the body is energy that’s taken away from the neck and the vertebrae.”

As far as the motivation behind developing their technology, Alpinestars quite openly states that it had nothing to do with the inception of the Leatt Brace.

“I couldn’t give you a specific timeline without looking at actual notes or anything like that, but as far as development was concerned, we were in development prior to the Leatt Brace even coming out,” Collins stated. “So it’s arguable that the concept of neck protection wasn’t necessarily a Leatt-driven idea. We had ideas and direction on neck protection before they released the product.”

“We really are constantly striving to develop the best and most technologically advanced products out there across all lines of motorsports and action sports,” Collins said. “We want to come up with something that’s going to better-protect members of the Alpinestars family, being our athletes our friends, all the ambassadors for our brand. So neck protection was kind of a natural step, just like helmets were years ago. It’s just the next step in protection based on what the athletes are doing and how extreme sports are getting.”

Also in the name of protection, Alpinestars is a big proponent of educating its dealers and consumers, in this case, making sure they know exactly what the BNS protects you from as well as what it does not. Each unit comes with a “Safety Critical Information” booklet with a warning to “ignore at your peril.” Complete with pictures, graphs, charts and analogies, the science and research behind the BNS is explained in plain language with its full contents repeated in nine different languages. Also included is a section on “what you really should know about neck injury mechanisms,” which, it states, “is not exclusive to the Bionic Neck Support and applies to other neck brace devices of rigid construction that work with the helmet.”

“This goes to all the consumers so it’s not a trade secret or something that’s private,” Collins said. “We are coming out with information that says, ‘Here’s what it will do, but here’s what it won’t do. Educate yourself.’ as opposed to just running an ad campaign that says, ‘Hey, here you go. It’s the end-all, be-all. It’s the helmet for your neck.’ Well, shoot. There’s a lot of people that are going to put that on really thinking that and really hurt themselves.”

Alpinestars makes it a point to not pitch its product with confidence-inspiring assertions, but with a solemn reminder that the risk for neck injuries is always present.

“I wish I could quote a statistic on how much additional protection it could offer,” Collins said. “But you don’t know how somebody’s going to crash, the first time or the hundredth time. So it’s a step in the right direction. Unless the helmet was completely attached to this, and your head was completely immobile the entire time you were riding, there’s no way of guaranteeing that you’re not going to suffer some type of injury while still wearing it. It’s the same thing with a helmet, chest protector, boots or anything.”

EVS

“Moving the barrier of injury” is the concept behind every piece of protective gear at EVS, including the RC Evolution. The fourth generation of their race collar product line, EVS can quite easily claim that neck protection is not a new concept for them.

“I’ll say we’ve had neck brace products for about eight years now,” said Guido Reitdyk, president of EVS. “We probably started working on [the RC Evolution] about four years ago.”

“Our development of this product really started with our product we’ve had in the past, the RC1 – the neck donut. We were one of the first ones to come out with it. From that, we developed an RC2 which was a more sculpted, more form-fitting neck roll.

“Basically, all our other products we have the good, better, best program,” Rietdyk explained. “For example, for knee braces, we have soft knee braces, then knee braces that have a little more rigidity to them, to completely rigid. So we said for neck braces we want to do the same thing where we go from soft to a harder, more limiting, to a completely limiting version of that same product group.”

In what they call a natural evolution (hence the name) of developing protective wear, EVS set out to create a neck protection system with a rigid frame, and started by drawing from their already extensive experience in building energy dispersing protective gear.

“There were three elements we set out to design,” Rietdyk said. “We said, ‘Okay, we need to design something that has a soft-to-hard frame, it has to have a large dispersal area, and it has to be a flexible program.”

Rietdyk goes on to explain the three elements.

“One school of thought is to have a firm, hard lock and I think everybody except for us has that. What we said is, ‘Before you hit the hard stop – which is the frame – lets have a soft prelude to that. That’s the combination that we have and no one else has that.

“Secondarily, we looked at the entire amount of energy being placed on someone’s head when they’re really wrecking into the ground. That’s a large amount of energy, and that energy has to go somewhere. Energy in equals energy out – it’s just a law of physics. We need a way out – a dispersion mechanism – for that energy. In order to absorb energy, we use the technology from our knee brace, and that is to use the energy to break, flex or deform a component. That’s energy that would otherwise break your skeletal structure. So we said we want to have a semi-rigid component. We want to have a semi-rigid outer shell so that allows the product to use the energy rather than that energy breaking your neck.

“Finally, when we’re talking about absorption of the energy, we want to absorb it and disperse it over as large an area as possible. That’s why you’re seeing that these areas [on the RC Evo] are very large. And that’s where we also differ with the other products on the market.”

In coming up with a design, EVS set out to build upon their original concept, rather than go down the same path other companies at the time were. They drew inspiration from football equipment – and area in which the company already had some familiarization.

“We have for a very long time dealt with product development in football because of our knee-bracing so we’re familiar with that research and the doctors that we work with work also with football players,” Rietdyk said. “The product we actually looked at most at that time was McDavid. The McDavid [Cowboy Collar] (pictured right) is a shape that you’ll recognize in this.” (www.McDavidUSA.com)

Photo right: The Cowboy Collar by McDavid - designed for football - was the inspiration behind the EVS RC Evolution.

One of the key differences in the EVS system as compared to others is the ability for your head to come forward. Rietdyk explains the reasoning behind this unique design feature.

“With the Leatt brace, you cannot lower your chin very much; with Alpinestars you can do a little bit more of it. What 661 is coming out with is also pretty limiting,” Rietdyk said. “We’ve really felt that it was a pretty big design flaw on all their parts because it doesn’t allow you to do any tuck and roll. What’s the first thing you learn when you’re little? You tuck and roll. The natural tendency of the body when you’re falling off the bike is to tuck in your head. Those braces don’t allow you to do that, and they place your head up where it’s actually much more vulnerable to impact, or an injury from spinal compression, which is exactly what you’re trying to avoid. That’s why we limit you to the point where you will not be able to move your chin all the way to your sternum, but we want you to have a pretty good range of motion. We feel that that’s a very strong feature of our product.”

The development of the RC Evolution was rather lengthy on account of developing the exact semi-rigid compound they were looking for.

“We spent an enormous amount of time designing this,” Rietdyk said. “Part of it is hard, but the edges, for example, are all semi-soft. There are very few factories that can actually do this kind of injection molding which is a co-molding. There are almost no factories that can make it on a big piece like this. The mold for [the RC Evo] is like the size of a small VW. The injection pressure to build it this way is enormous. That technology itself was a very big hurdle to jump to get that point.”

After developing their prototypes, EVS found the results it was looking for after extensive testing of the RC Evo at Dynamic Research Inc, a facility in Torrance which handles automobile crash testing for Honda and Toyota.

“We rigged a crash-test dummy with all this gear on and we basically did four different tests,” Rietdyk explained. “We had it suspended as a pendulum test and we did one where it’s on an angle falling down onto a board and we did one where it’s knocking over a piece of metal. It hits, and knocks over the block. The four things that we chose, we had fantastic results. However, they’re fairly meaningless in the real world. It totally depends on the speed you’re going, it totally depends on which angle you’re falling at off your bike. So for us to go out there and say, ‘We will save 40% of the impact energy...’ that’s a lie. It would be completely meaningless to say.

“For our own confidence, in these limiting variables situations, [our test results were] very good. Coupled with the testimonials we’re receiving from doctors saying that the patient wouldn’t have survived if they didn’t have something like this on... we know that we’re on the right track with it.

“I think the concept we have is unique and it’s strong,” Rietdyk concluded. “We like a soft component with a hard component. That’s the EVS philosophy about protective gear and we’ve been one of the biggest leaders in purely protective gear.”

661

It’s not on the market yet, but rumors of the elusive 661 neck brace/chest protector have long been circulating. Upon visiting the 661 headquarters in Valencia, California, we got a chance to preview the “Droid,” hear about the concept of it and the development behind it from Eddie Cole, president of the Valencia Sport Group, Inc.

“We’ve been working on this now for about three years, actually,” Cole said. “So it’s been a long development process – a lot of trial and error.”

Like EVS, neck protection is not a new concept to 661, as they had neck rolls on the market as early as eight years ago.

“One of our first products was the foam neck rolls and what we call ‘neck nuts’ which Velcro onto the front like a big foam donut,” Cole recalled. “That technology really was borrowed from go-kart racing and some auto racing. There were three or four companies in motorcycling that had neck rolls and neck nuts and a configuration of that and we were one of them. In fact, it was one of our number one selling items in the whole product line. We were very interested in developing the neck brace protection and taking it to the next level.”

In an interesting twist to the story, Cole revealed that the Valencia Sport Group, Inc. had even expressed interest in getting involved with Leatt.

“We had some preliminary discussions with the Leatt people [Chris Leatt and Geoff Patterson],” Cole said. “We were interested in this category because 661 is a body protection company, and we knew that they were going to find some solution in North America so we actually talked to them a little bit about distributing their product. For a bunch of different reasons, that didn’t work out. We were probably not the right mechanism for them. They went their separate way. I think they have a great product.”

“We showed them the brace that we had developed before we even saw their brace,” Cole continued, referencing Leatt and company. “It was a combination of injection-molded plastic and biofoam that was a little bit stiffer. So that’s how this project started.”

“We started out with just a glorified neck roll,” Cole said. “The inspiration for that was just our own neck nut and neck roll. We were looking to get to the next level to stop that hyperextension, but we couldn’t figure out how to stabilize just that neck ring. Then when we put it into a compete unit, we felt like we really ended up stabilizing it and getting what we were looking for. It didn’t migrate or move around on the upper body.”

The 661 Droid is a design unlike any other in that it is built into a chest protector.

“It comes with three different size blocks for the back and the sides to be able to raise it or lower it depending on the size of your neck and where you’re comfortable with your helmet landing on the pads,” Cole said. “The front is a two-piece with a hinge, so it’s real comfortable. There’s biofoam padding all underneath so it’s just like a normal chest protector.”

Another unique design feature with the Droid is that it gives you the choice of attaching the back piece or not (see photo right).

“Being in the roost-deflector business, we find that about 50% of the people want chest protection without a back and then about 50% want something that has the back. So this gives you both of those options.”

As far as its concept of protection, it’s similar to that of the Leatt and Alpinestars braces, but with what Cole feels is one major distinctive benefit.

“It’s the same basic principle as other neck braces that are on the market in that your helmet is going to bottom out on these landing pads in every direction,” said Cole. “It’s going to stop that hyper-extension. The difference in our protector is that force, when it’s applied to the landing pads, is transferred throughout the whole upper torso instead of just specific areas [on the chest and upper back]. We’re transferring the force throughout the whole upper body. We think that’s a big benefit from a safety perspective.”

One of the original founders of 661, Steve Behrens, who is now working as an industrial designer and product design consultant, talked about the function of the design.

“When the halo around the neck is impacted, that’s going to naturally disperse the load into the front and back panel and over the shoulder which will then take a lot of pressure off the spine,” Behrens explained. “Those areas there act as naturally suspension. The rib cage and the shoulder blades, they’re all very flexible. They can move and take a lot of force.”

As far as backing up their claims with lab research in the form of crash testing – you won’t find much. You won’t find any, actually. But what you will find is years of development in the field, and load testing done on the Droid by way of a computer simulation known as FEA (Finite Element Analysis), which Behrens explains, is to figure out how much load it would take to break the plastic.

“Our company’s pretty interesting in that it’s made up of riders that decided to work in this industry,” Cole stated. “There’s not a lot of degreed engineers or a lot of medical doctors walking around in these hallways. It’s a bunch of motocross guys and dirt bike guys and gals that decided that this is what they wanted to do. So we took a very simple approach, frankly. We looked at the product from a rider’s perspective. What would be comfortable? What would be the right weight? And how do we add protection in the areas that we think are important? So we started out by really sketching this thing out from a rider’s perspective, not from a medical perspective.

“It’s no more complicated than that. We got lots of really good feedback on, ‘Okay, it’s comfortable, I can ride in it, it stops my head in all different directions from hyperextension, and here we are.’”

“What we’ve done is taken upper body protection really kind of to the next level where we’ve incorporated neck stabilization and a brace and yet we’ve also solved the problem where you can have roost protection and we’ve dispersed the load throughout the whole upper body,” Cole summed up. “You don’t have to worry about, ‘What do I do about a protector?’ and, ‘How do I fit my brace into that?’ So I think we’ve come to the market with a very reasonably priced solution to a lot of the existing problems with neck braces and chest protectors being developed by two different companies.”

Click here for  Investigating the Neck Brace Revolution: Part 2