EP#54 - Neck braces, do they really work? Atlas Braces Brady Sheren explains why.

If a neck brace could save your life, why doesn't everyone wear one? Do they hinder movement and vision or just transfer a potential injury to another part of the body? ADB's Mitch Lees caught up with founder of Atlas Braces, Brady Sheren, to talk about neck braces and why they believe everyone should wear one. They talk about the myths and stories regarding neck brace injuries and provide data and analytics on how a neck brace can prevent a catastrophic injury. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the ADB Podcast, where we talk all things dirty with your host, Mitch Lee. Alright, guys, welcome to another ADB podcast. We have a pretty cool topic we're going to talk about today, which is quite often uh discussed in the pits and on the racetrack, and that is protective gear, in particular neck braces. And we've actually got the uh well, founder of uh Atlas Brady, he's gonna join us in a second. Before we do, I'm just gonna introduce uh and thank our sponsors. We've got Dunlop sponsoring the show. As always, they're sponsoring the show with the AT82 tire. It's a multi-directional tire. You can kind of flip it around and you get different traction on different sides of the knob, which is pretty cool for soft and hard terrain. So go check it out. And I want to thank uh Sherco. Uh Sherko sponsoring the show with their Fast Finance on their 2026 two-stroke factory range. 3.89% comparison rate over two years or a 4.89% comparison rate over three years. That's through the Sherko Fast Finance. So go check them out at Sherko.com.au. So without further ado, I'm gonna introduce Brady. Brady, thanks for coming on the podcast today. I appreciate it. Thank you for having me. So to clear up for everyone, um, just tell us who you are and yeah, your role with Atlas.

SPEAKER_03 1:13

Yeah, my name's Brady Sharon. I'm the CEO and founder of Atlas, and uh I used to race Supercross professionally in America um and in Canada a little bit. I'm from Canada originally, and yeah, after my racing career, started started working on the designs for Atlas and yeah, the rest is history.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

What uh so what drove you into going into protective gear coming out of Supercross? I know kind of Atlas appeared on our radar around 2010, 11, kind of when we got to start to see prototypes in the public. What kind of drove you from Supercross career and then into protective gear?

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Uh through the last few years of racing Supercross, I wore some of the competitors' products. They were just kind of coming on the market then. My last year racing was 2009. Um, so I'd worn a neck brace for three, core years. And uh I wore a few of them and I was just I was sold on the safety aspect of them and what they could do and how they could protect you. I just didn't like the way that they did it. I didn't like the execution of how it felt as a rider. You know, they were very rigid and restrictive when they first came on the market. And uh I just thought there could be a better way to solve that. And it in my head, I was thinking, number one, I'd like one for myself. And then beyond that, you know, this category if we're gonna improve safety in the sport, we need something that people are happy to wear or comfortable wearing. Otherwise, they're just gonna take them off. So, to me, if you had a product people didn't want to wear, that wasn't a great longevity for that category.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Yeah. Uh it's probably like for a long period there too. I think they're far more accepted in the last, say, 15 years, but for a while they're especially when they first came out, man, like neck braces were hit and miss. You know, we were kind of discussing this before we uh jumped online that um yeah, it was a new product to the market. We hadn't obviously we've been racing motocross for decades before that, no one had seen them before. And so it's always tricky to convince people to jump on board with something that they haven't seen or or tested before. Um uh, but it seems to be now, especially we're gonna get into this later in the podcast, especially amongst kids. My kids race, he's he's uh my son's uh Jackson is six, and my uh daughter Bonnie is four. Jackson races competitively, Bonnie's not allowed to yet, but so many kids in their class, they run the neck brace and the chest armor set up now. Uh, and then you kind of see it slowly uh vanish as people get older. There's probably, I would say, watching my kids, there's more kids right riding and racing with neck braces than I when I go racing, and I see adults riding and racing with neck braces. So we're gonna get into that. It's it's a really cool topic because it does split and polarize opinions. The neck brace, the same with the knee brace. You know, we we've done similar discussions uh with other uh companies that do knee braces, and it's the same kind of thing. People kind of, you know, they either will wear them or they won't, and they've got their own particular reasons. So we're kind of gonna get into all that. Um, so if once you finish racing supercross and you kind of started how how do you transition into making protective gear? It kind of seems like one of those things that's like it's not an easy thing to do.

SPEAKER_03 4:11

It it seems aggressive, but no, I from an early age I was really into metal fabrication and building things and all that kind of stuff. So I've been doing that in a shop scenario for many, many years. So I was used to building things and working with different materials, modifying my motorcycles, making parts. Okay, you know, I had done a lot of that already, so I kind of had a bit of a background in that on the side as a hobby.

SPEAKER_00 4:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

And uh I really liked that part. And then in 2009, we also started Matrix Concepts. So I'm an owner of that as well with Eddie Cole and his sons, who started Answer and 661 and all those companies. Um, so we had been working on that, and I was helping with some of the designs of those early products. And the engineer that initially did those products gave me a uh a cracked version of SolidWork that had programmed. So I kind of started messing around with that. And you know, once I've had that, then it was like, okay, now I actually have the right tools to, you know, just take my creativity and put mouse to screen instead of pen to paper, but um to to be able to do that and then manufacture from there. Uh so that was really the key that unlocked the thing that I really needed because most of the stuff I had built free that, I mean, I use AutoCAD a little bit, but it's pretty rudimentary. Um, I was mostly building things with my hands, which is a good start to understand the materials you're working with. But uh, you know, I didn't the design side was kind of a little bit new, but I was always good at math and I knew what I wanted, I could envision it, so I decided to build it. And uh yeah, so it took it was years of messing around with that, making some products for the other company, um, kind of helped me get my feet wet. And then I mean, the neck brace took a good three years. I started in 2009 just with like some conceptual drawings and some ideas of what could maybe work, but with that, I wasn't even sure I could make something viable, to be honest. In the beginning, it was more of an exercise to see like, hey, could we make something that's better from a rider perspective? You know, we knew we could always test it in a lab afterwards. And that was kind of the opposite approach that the competitors took. I mean, they were some of them were doctors, and they said, okay, we have this concept, let's verify this in a lab, and then okay, it works, go ride with it. And and you know, I think that's where some of the shortcomings fell. It worked fine in a lab, but in the real world scenario, it was just cumbersome and you know, needed some work. And granted, it was a first-gen product, so like you know, looking back at my first gen product, I hate it too. You gotta start somewhere and things evolve and you learn, you learn over time. So um, yeah, I was really an exercise for me to see number one, can I create something that's a good experience while you're riding? And then, okay, let's throw that in the lab and see if what that translates to safety.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:05

It's a it's kind of the opposite approach.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yeah, it's a funny introduction to the world of protective equipment because for most of us from the outside, we just assume the people that come up with these products are, you know, biomechanical engineers, there's something in the medical field, there's some sort of science in the medical field, and like you just said, they come up with this product in a design element and then it just appears on on you know, on the market, and there's no real world testing, there's none of that. I like the idea that you've come from an actual professional supercross racing background, and then you've just had the skill set to start designing and coming up with the concept of um of building this product.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Yeah, and I'm not saying the other guys, I'm sure they did some real world testing. It was just, like I said, to me, the final result. My observation from the outside looking in is that they leaned on the lab quite a bit and they said, Well, we got the results we like, so it works. Why don't you want to wear it? And you know, as a rider, that's difficult. I mean, you know, you ride yourself, people are picky, it's it's difficult. And you want to add a piece of equipment to a traditional guy that's been riding for 20 years. That's that's challenging. Yeah. You know, you have to really make sure that it's something that makes sense. And, you know, we did a lot of we did a lot of lab work. We worked with the lab, we did testing, we refined the product before it ever hit the market. Um they had some ideas because they were actually the biomechanical engineers and doctors there at the lab were involved in some of the lawsuits from neck brace crashes and stuff like that. So they were really aware of what the shortcomings were, what people were getting sued for, what were happening in the accidents. And I mean, that was fantastic to have those guys on board and to go through the product and test it and make refinements and go, okay, this is the area we need to, you know, do something with to improve the safety or avoid a problem that some of the competitors were facing at the time. So that was invaluable. And working with those guys and refining the thing made a huge difference.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

So, from your experience before you guys started creating the Atlas product, what was what was the first response a rider would have? This is we're talking late mid-nauties, so 2005, 6, 7 through to 2011, 12. What was the main response everyone would give you about a neck brace?

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Ours or before that?

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Before you guys, when you were finished racing professionally, when you were lining up on the start line and some guys appearing with them, what was the pushback? What was the issue for most people?

SPEAKER_03 9:32

The rigidity was was the biggest one. It's just a big, stiff product and it was hard to move in. That was the number one complaint that I heard. Some of it was range of motion, you know, depending on the neck length and the adjustment of the time. Those were the biggest ones.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:46

And so that was mobility, really.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Yeah. So that was what so your idea then was to address those concepts. How can I make this product still as safe? Obviously, we understand that the product is designed, we're gonna get into this in a second, too, to protect your neck, uh, but also allow you to move and that kind of thing. Because, you know, I I remember we're talking about this before too. Um, when I first started on ADB in 2009, we started seeing people wear neck braces, and there were some big name pro riders that either just absolutely refuse to use them, and then we saw some guys, the tray canards of the world, that you like I felt like they walked around the pits with one on. Um, you know, that they were the so you had these like two ends of the scale, uh, and the general uh like vibe that we got back was that yeah, people either had the issue with range of movement or mobility or they felt too rigid or whatever else. So that was, I guess, what Atlas was trying to address first up because there was really not many other products in that space.

SPEAKER_03 10:39

No, there was a few at the time. So there was Liad and Alpine Star, there was um Ordema in Europe, which we never really saw those in North America, but um, that was another one, and then there was another one that sort of barely got to market called Omega. And that was the the old um guys that did Axo out of Italy. It was a friend of ours, we knew him through business and stuff, and um, so I actually got to try one of those, and it was kind of horseshoe shaped in the front, and it had uh the straps were like seatbelts, like actual seatbelt material, and uh it was pretty funky. But it I got to try one of those before it came out, and they had some okay ideas, but again, the execution was not great as a rider, and it had these hard bars that came all the way from the back, all the way over your collarbones. Wow. So like just putting it on felt sketchy because there were like hard things rubbing on your collarbones. And but anyway, the the openness of it and it kind of had some suspensions quasi-system to it. And there were some positives that I said, Oh, I kind of like those ideas. This is an interesting um take on what other people did, but again, the execution of it wasn't great. Um, so yeah, I just saw that and I said, Hey, can we do a better version of the ideas or versions of these ideas that take that and make it make sense?

SPEAKER_01 12:05

Um, okay, so let's then get into the neck brace. Let's kind of break down exactly for us because I I've got some really fun questions asked, and so also some probably some pretty topical questions about like, do these things actually work? Because that's the big question that everyone has, and do they transfer force to somewhere else in the body? Every brace we wear, it's the first question everyone asks. Whether it's a knee brace, will I break my femur? You know, what's worse? Before we get into that, talk us through like what's a neck brace actually trying to prevent in the event of an accident? Are we talking sideways movement, forward movement, compression from the top of the head? What's the uh a neck brace specifically designed to prevent all of those.

SPEAKER_03 12:46

So the the neck brace in the in our rendition of it is different than like a Hans device in a car or some of these other versions of how those work. So a Hans device in a car, you're kind of strapped, it's strapped to the back, and it's basically just preventing whiplash because that's their biggest concern. Um, they don't really have a compression problem because you have a roll cage, so you're not as concerned about that. And uh yeah, so that's that apparatus for us. You know, we have to deal with compression, we have to deal with hyperflexion, which is your forward and down, hyperextension, which is head backwards, and lateral hyperflexion, which is your head to the side. So we kind of have to combat all of those, and that's a lot more challenging, obviously, and you don't have a roll cage to fall back on. Um the main goal is just reduce forces to the neck. That's it's very simple. You know, when we when we crash, and this goes for all protection, really, we're putting our body in a scenario that it was never meant to encounter.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:47

You know, with speeds and heights and all these different things. I mean, the anatomy of the human body, you can think of it like it's meant to withstand things that it can do under its own colour. If you can run as fast as you can and fall down, you're gonna be fine. You might get bumps and bruises, but you're gonna be okay. Even if you run as fast as you can into a wall, you're not gonna die. You it might suck, but it's okay. But if you get on a motorcycle and hit that wall as fast as you can, that's we're talking about a very different thing. You know, so anything we do that's kind of beyond our our body's own capability, we need a bit of help.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:20

And the people to poo-poo the protection and go, oh, we don't need that. It's uh I can move, I feel better, I whatever. You're not gonna feel better when you hit the ground. You're just not, yeah. You know, it's just it doesn't work like that, unfortunately. And you know what I what I tell a lot of people is that no matter what you do, gravity still exists. You know, you can change your bike speed, you can change the track, you can improve your skill level, you can get jacked in the gym, you can improve your cardio, you can do yoga. I fill in the blank. You can do whatever you want, but we still hit the ground and our bodies just aren't meant to withstand that. So we need some help. And really the only way to do that is protection. And you know, safety has been such a big controversial topic, at least in North America, here I'm sure in Australia too. And, you know, people, the conversation gets so off the rails to me. Like I said, with the bike displacement, the track difficulty, the amount of flaggers, the and look, all of these things could be improved always, like all things in life, right? I'm sure there's room for improvement for most of them, but it's not gonna stop guys getting hurt. Yeah, you know, flat track guys still hit the wall. Yeah, a pro riding a pit bike still gets injured. You know, that's the highest skill level on the smallest displacement bike.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:42

You know, it's an extra it's an extreme, but people still get hurt.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:45

So, you know, making those changes is is just going to kind of knee capital sport, in my opinion. Like, what are you gonna cut it down so no one can jump anything? I mean, it's just not you're not gonna stop technology. You know, it's it's gonna keep rolling forward and you can try and push back, but I mean, just to me, that's a fool's error to to try and do that.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

Yeah. Okay, so um so so what would you would you would you like to see a lot of the governing bodies around the world push for compulsory safety equipment, things like neck braces in the sport?

SPEAKER_03 16:19

You know, that has been improving. There's been a lot of countries and different things now making sea level different levels of sea uh body protection mandatory. That's been happening uh more and more. From a business standpoint, I would love that. But as a as a human being that lives in the world, I think people should have a choice on what they do. If they want to take the risk, that's I think they should have that choice with uh that goes for a lot of things in life. So to say that it's mandatory, I don't know. I think that's challenging. I think it should be strongly encouraged. I think that you know more people should look at the data that's out there and be more open, you know, to giving these things a try. And if you're someone out there that's concerned about your safety, you don't have to wait for a governing body to say you have to wear something. You can make a change today.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

You know, all the stuff's available. I got warehouse full of a bit better. You know, go go for it. And so do other people. And you know, it just you kind of have like a lot of things in life, you have to take it into your own hands and make your own decision and weigh that risk. I think the hard part with our sport is like you said, that it's popular with kids, and then as they grow up, you know, they become a teenager and they go, ah, I'm too cool for this. And you know, unfortunately, our sport's dominated by let's say 10 to 25-year-old males. It's like what category of human being you know that cares less about their safety? Sure. 10 to 25 year old. You know, like at that age, we're we're all like that, you know, and that's hard to overcome because they they're just at that level in their life. They don't have a family yet, they don't have bills and kids, and you know, all these different responsibilities that require them to kind of be like, okay, on Monday to go do what they have to do. Um, so they're they're more inclined to take to take a lot of risk, and that's difficult to reason with.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah, yeah, that's yeah, you're exactly right to convince someone like that that they probably should wear something that's gonna help protect them. It's hard enough to get them to put a helmet on at times.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

Um yeah, and really, you know, that to there's only three areas of the body that are gonna cause the worst type of injury death. That's your head, your neck, and internal organs. So helmet, neck brace, chest protector. Yeah, it's it's really a no-brainer to me. It's like you gotta protect those vulnerable areas of the body. And you know, like I said, when you hit the ground, your body's just not prepared to handle those forces. You know, the the internal organ one is a trickier one. Usually that means getting impaled, or you know, that's a trickier one to have happen. It's a little more rare. But the head and neck, I mean, that's that's the most common thing you're gonna land on. Yeah, you're going over the bars and hitting the ground, that's happening all the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

Um, and even less sinister stuff than death, obviously, paralysis, concussion, uh all of these things can accumulate over time and become a real problem and drastically alter your life.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Yeah. So then talking about those kind of injuries, is the Atlas neck brace and other neck braces, are they a guarantee against things like paralysis or death in the worst case scenario? Like you just said, with this, I would argue our sport, maybe aside alongside the fight sports, is the most the most dangerous sports in the world. Will a neck brace always prevent paralysis or death?

SPEAKER_03 19:46

No, we can't promise that it's foolproof. It's not, nothing is a seatbelt, isn't it? Nothing isn't. But what we can say is that in mass, when you look at a large data set, you're significantly better off wearing a neck brace in all scenarios that have ever been tested, whether that's collarbones, head injury, neck injury, you're better off wearing a neck brace. Uh collarbone, you're 45% less likely to break your collarbone in a neck brace. You're 89% less likely to have a severe neck injury. I mean, the numbers are, it's not even close. It's it's literally seatbelt level, you know, safety. And the hard part is people point to these anecdotal stories that, oh, well, my friend got injured. It's like maybe you have to put that in a large data set. It doesn't not that your friend doesn't matter. I'm not calling that friend insignificant or that incident. That's terrible. I wouldn't obviously push that on anybody. But when you put that into a large data set, the numbers are over overwhelmingly positive. There are some outliers, some things happen. You know, there's some things that we can't protect against. Like if you just picture yourself standing up straight and just spin your head around in a 360. If that kind of rotational something happens, we can't do anything about that because we're we can't come up high enough to block that, or you know, you wouldn't be able to function if we limited that range of motion.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:07

So things like that can still happen. Um there's been cases like that before. I know with Eddie in 661, he was involved in a lawsuit where that happened to a kid wearing his helmet. There was no neck braces at the time, but uh they sued the helmet maker, the track, and they go after everyone. And what they ended up figuring out was that his injury was rotational. It was the head spinning around and then causing um a tear, I think, in his brain stammer or the spinal cord or something like that. Uh terrible, absolutely terrible. But it was nothing that the helmet could have prevented. The helmet did its job for the impact, but it can't stop rotation. So there's some scenarios like that where we just you just can't do a lot, and those are unfortunate when they do happen.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

You mentioned this before. Um, it's actually less likely to core uh uh cause collarbone injuries as well. Um, I guess a lot of people and The maybe the myth out there is that neck braces can cause busted collarbones. Um, and my justification for that, having worn a neck brace for a long time, is that well, it's better than a broken neck. I've broken my collarbone, I got plates in it, and yep, that was a pain in the ass, but I was off the bike for like two months or something. They heal so quickly. Two weeks, yeah. Yeah, like it was it was fine. You mentioned there that there is actually even less likely a chance of breaking the collarbone. Can you explain the collarbone relation to the neck brace and the neck in general in an accident?

SPEAKER_03 22:30

I think the collarbone thing, a lot of it is optics because they see an object sitting on or near a collarbone. So it's an easy scapegoat to go, oh, that's what did it.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:40

But it's the that's not really how collarbones break. You know, I broke my collarbone when I was nine years old and neck braces didn't exist. Uh almost everyone I know is the same thing. You know, it's so easy. It only takes nine pounds pounds of pressure to break one. So it's very easy. Most of those happen from either a shoulder impact when you hit the ground like that, or you put your arm out, and that's just the weak chain, the weak link in the chain is the collarbone. Uh that's pretty much how they all break. The other thing is they usually break outwards, yeah, or upwards, I should say, um, not downwards. So if it was, if it was the brace doing it, it would break inwards. And you look at any x-ray or anything, that's pretty much never the case. Uh, the other thing is when we built ours, our neck brace, we made sure that we didn't put anything hard or rigid over the collarbone. We actually took the shoulder pad and extended it all the way forward up to the chest support so it would actually cover the collarbone. So you actually have a you know, a half inch or a few centimeters of padding in there covering it. And one of the reasons for that was number one, we didn't want the frame to come in contact with the collarbone at all for any reason. And two, the the reason that it's less likely to break the collarbone with the helmet or with the neck brace on is because you don't have the sharp rim of the helmet coming down and striking it.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:00

That's like a knife, you know, where the undersurface of the brace is, you know, a whatever, three, four centimeters wide, and you know, you have a centimeter or two a pad at so that's much better than a sharp helmet rim in most cases, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:16

Uh yeah, so it's just a better scenario for that. And the data that we've seen collected, there was an ambulance study, and it took 10 years of ambulance data from a handful of states in the U.S. They had over 10,000 injuries that were very detailed and reported. And yeah, with all of theirs, they found it was 45% less collarbone injuries with people wearing neck braces than with without. Wow, that dispels a big it it's a yeah, it's a huge number. And I people, for whatever reason, don't believe that. And like I said, I think it's just the optics, they just see it sitting there, and it's just easy to go, well, that caused it. And that's not it's generally not the case. And you know, I it'd be very difficult to gather collarbone data before and after from hospitals, and you know, it's it's very difficult to collect that type of data. But I mean, people are breaking collarbones for forever. You go to a local ski resort where there's mountain biking happening, I mean they're seeing two, three a day. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's just a you know, that's just such a tiny bone, it's easy to break. And yeah, it's unfortunate that that got correlated with with neck braces, and it was an easy thing for people to go, oh, I don't want that.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Yeah. Do you think any of that there's any malicious intent when those kind of myths and rumors come out? Are there other organizations that might be financially invested in people not wearing knee uh neck braces to do do you think that ever happens in our industry?

SPEAKER_03 25:40

I'm sure there's some part of that for whatever reason, but I I think the bigger part is the mentality, and it could be uh a self-protection mechanism where people some people don't even want to talk about getting injured because it just freaks them out and whatever. So maybe it's something where they go, Oh, that's gonna break my collarbone. So I don't want that, and it's a way for them to justify to themselves that they don't need it, yeah, and that they're fine without it. I I don't know, maybe I'm not a psychologist, but yeah, you know, maybe there's some aspect of that deep down, even if they don't realize that's why they're doing it or something, they just don't want to admit that they feel like they need that or it's gonna help them or whatever. That the challenging part with that is that's fine. They they can do what they like. But I mean, when you hit the ground, you're laying there looking up at the sky, god forbid something bad happens. It's like you do anything to put that thing on and do and do it again. But you don't have, you know, when it's too late, it's too late. Yeah, and that's what's really frustrating to me when I see, you know, any of these guys, anytime you hear about someone getting paralyzed, or you know, and you see the video and they go over the bars, land on their head, and you know, and they're just laying there. I mean, it breaks my heart every time. It's so tough to watch and knowing that something exists, whether it's mine or somebody else's, I don't care. Yeah, that could have prevented that or at least made it, you know, significantly less of a problem for them. Yeah, that it's tough. It's tough to watch, and it's tough to hear people talk about it. And, you know, it's really difficult to also insert ourselves in those conversations because people just get mad. Yeah. You know, like if you go, oh, I wish he was wearing a neck brace, like, oh, you're an asshole. And I'm you know, I'm I'm trying to do my part to help. You know, everyone wants to yell about safety. You know, I it's hard to go out and do something about it. Yeah. And that that's that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to do our part to improve the safety of the sport. And it yeah, it's a challenge for sure. I mean, just to come up with something viable that makes any sense, number one. And then number two, to try and get, you know, convince people to wear it or then it's gonna help them. And um, yeah, it's it's a tough road.

SPEAKER_01 27:52

I think um I was probably personally guilty of a bit of that at the start, was that like, look, I'm never gonna be good enough to race super cross and I don't go fast enough to have the kind of serious neck injury, and I'd rather it not hurt my collarbone kind of thing if I was to land on it. And that was just, I don't even know where that came from, but that was just somewhere in my uh, you know, thought process um that would have been just plugged in somewhere along the line. And um, what you mentioned before about yeah, but if you look at the way a neck brace sits on your collarbone, if you injure your collarbone via a neck brace, the impact should be forcing the collarbone down. And you're exactly right, mine wasn't. My collarbone was on in the upwards position. Every like image we get sent, whether it's from Daniel Sanders and him breaking a collarbone or when we've had all our columnists, it's always facing up. And a lot of the time it compounds, you know, it comes out the skin sometimes, but it's it's I've never seen one that goes inwards. Um, so yeah, when when you mention that, that makes way more sense. But unfortunately, the the myth and rumor and lie mill in our industry can become so rife because it's such a big topic for us getting hurt that um you fail sometimes personally to see the actual uh rationale behind like would that actually make sense? Um you also mentioned before obviously neck braces are there to prevent all movements, forward, back, side to side compression. Is there a particular um position the neck gets in that you see more than others that is a focus for neck braces to prevent? Because I have heard, again, this is probably just more rumors within our industry that gets thrown around there, but it's not necessarily forward and back that's actually more a neck issue, it's more compression and side to side. Is there any truth in that with neck brace design?

SPEAKER_03 29:34

Yeah, compression is the killer for sure, because that's when you get the the compression creates the exploding vertebrae, and that's when you get shards that go in your spinal cord and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Uh so those are really nasty. You don't want compression if you can help it. So that's the worst one for sure. You're better off to be. Well, let me back up. Pretty much every accident that we see that's motocross related involves both compression and a movement in a direction or multiple because you're going off, you're lawn darting, you're hitting the ground. So there's some element of compression combined with whichever way your head is going to rotate at the time. So pretty much every accident is both.

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:12

You know, it's pretty, pretty rare that you see only compression or only flexion or only extension, you know, it's it's usually a combination. And when you see a guy tumble, it might be three or four different versions of that all along the way. But compression is definitely the most deadly. So that's the one straight on compression is the worst case scenario.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Okay. So how does an atlas neck brace prevent compression? Does the edge of the helmet, you know, come in contact with the neck brace and not let your head, you know, be compressed? How does the atlas neck brace address the compression thing?

SPEAKER_03 30:47

Pretty much that's close. So our a lot of the competitors work in what I call kind of like a two-stage system where they catch the helmet and then that disperses energy in different parts of the body. So there's kind of two tiers to how that operates. Ours works on three tiers where we catch the helmet, but because the actual neck brace itself is flexible, sort of acts like a tuning fork or a leaf spring or, you know, whatever, however, you want to define it, where we catch the helmet, we disperse some of the energy through the structure of the brace itself out away from the impact, and then the remainder of it goes around your body into different areas. Because part of the thing that we wanted with mobility was um reducing secondary injuries. All our bones was a topic that we explored, but we found out those the braces weren't really causing those. That was we threw some padding on there just to, you know, be safe about it. But uh, that was really a non-issue. But there was um we found that in a lot of accidents, it's the sudden stop that causes the problem, not the actual speed. It's how fast you come to a stop and what's involved in that with your body. You know, if you crash in a corner, it can be low speed, but if you put your arm out and go, you're gonna break a collarbone or a wrist or a, you know, that's how those things go. So it's a sudden stop that we don't like. And to me, the competitors that were rigid were creating an artificial sudden stop in that process. They would catch the helmet, but then it's a it's just a sharp stop.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:19

And that's not what you want. You want to be able to slow down and control the impact and increase the amount of time that the impact is taking place for. So when you have a sudden stop, you have a sharp peak of force and then it then it comes down. When you have flexibility, you have a much more um relaxed peak of force. And that's what you want. So it delays the force over more time, which reduces the peak force and thus reduces injury. It's the same way that you know a 6D helmet works or um an airbag, essentially. Um, some of these things, they they slow down that impact so you don't have that sudden stop. And that was really the goal that, or not necessarily the goal, but the thing that making it flexible and making it better for mobility on the bike actually did this for us too. And that's what we found out when we were in the lab. When we saw the graphs and we saw the forces and saw how things were happening, we were like, holy, this is fantastic! Like this, this this gave us something that we didn't even know we were gonna get, and uh it actually performed better than we thought. So um, we were really happy with that, and being able to extend those forces over time is a matters a great deal for your safety.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

So, how did you guys get then the same safety element but uh good mobility and movement from the head so you can look around? I remember the first Atlas brace I wore back in either 2011 or 12. Uh, I I the marketing material that I got when I got the brace was that it's lower in the sides, so I can look to my left a little easier. Um, you know, that seems like oh, okay, that's pretty obvious. Why didn't everyone just do that? Just lower the neck brace essentially, and then you got more movement. But then wouldn't that then uh potentially make it less safe because you maybe have less chance, there's more room for the head to move because the neck brace is lower. So, how did you guys balance the safety with mobility?

SPEAKER_03 34:14

So we actually didn't make it really lower on the sides, okay? But the one thing that we did do is do height adjustment. So you could make it lower, you could make it taller, you know, you had the ability to do that because earlier when we were testing, we found that people with different length necks, you have to have a solution for that. So one size fits all, it fits nobody. It doesn't work. So we did height adjustment, and that really made a difference, um, especially different neck lengths, different helmets, yeah, all different physiology for your body. Uh, we needed to address that. So, yeah, we had height adjustment. It wasn't necessarily lower by default, okay, uh, but you had the ability to play with it. The thing that really did it was um the gap in the back of the brace of the frame. Not having a closed frame like the other products gives you that flexibility. So it actually moves with your shoulders. When you scrub a jump or go on a corner or whatever, it's gonna move, it's gonna mimic your body's movement, and that's makes it feel less rigid.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

So it was the motion of that and being able to make that adapt to your body that really made the biggest difference. Um height adjustment helps, you could fine-tune the size a little bit, having chest suspension in the front that were independent on each side. So depending on how you crashed or moved, you know, that would have some compliance as well. It was just little things like that, just but not closing the frame was the biggest one by far.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:38

And then beyond that, um, playing with the materials as well, finding the right balance of how flexible and how rigid the frame actually was, that took a little bit of trial and error. But um, yeah, doing that made a big difference. And it like in our testing, when I mentioned kind of the tuning fork aspect of how it pushes forces away from the impact. We had some test videos where it saw a hyperextension um moment. So when the head goes backwards and contacts the back of the brace, the front of the brace would actually lift off the chest because that force was coming through the frame and pushing it out the front of the brace. So that's that flexibility was allowing those forces to go through and it was directly away from where that impact site was. So that was a really cool insight. And when we saw that, we're like, wow, holy, that's like we weren't expecting that. Yeah, but uh it's a you can visually see the force leaving the site of the accident, which is pretty incredible.

SPEAKER_00 36:36

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 36:36

And that was huge for us to know we were on the right path for reducing secondary injury, you know, because when these chest supports and back supports sit on your body, we don't want those to cause any problems. Yeah, you know, and part of that too is we made four contact points. So we have a dual dual chest supports and dual back supports instead of a single strut on the front and the back. Because those single struts, they were sitting on the sternum and they were sitting on the spine. And I said, Well, if we're gonna push forces into those areas, that that doesn't seem logical, you know, even if they're reduced or you know, whatever the scenario may be, that just didn't seem logical to me. And I knew a few friends, pro riders, that broke their sternum, yeah, wearing neck braces and things like that, or crack them at least. And to me, that just wasn't a way to go. So we did dual chest supports that sit more in the large muscle groups and the same thing on the back to get it away from your spine and sternum. And the other benefit of doing that is uh we're really able to increase the surface area that the brace contacts in the body by 27% over our competitors. So whenever you had a force, it's going out over a wider area of the body. And a way you can test how this works is you know, poke yourself really hard with one finger and then poke yourself with your whole palm. Yeah, the difference in how that feels is surface area. That's why that it's more palatable. So when you throw a bunch of force at that, it can make a massive difference to what happens after, even just muscle soreness, bruising, you know, you think even little fatigue uh can make a difference in that.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Yeah. So is there a chance then that the brace, like you said, on the sternum or on the back could have an imp an injury when it transfers the force somewhere else? Certainly better than breaking your neck. No one could disagree with you on that. But there's there's still a small percentage that there will be an injury somewhere else, but it's better than breaking your neck.

SPEAKER_03 38:27

It's not impossible. We haven't really seen much of it. We've seen a little bit of bruising, or you know, like I said, on huge impacts, you know, you hit the ground hard. You can't you get sore. Yeah, so that's you know, to be expected. But I can't say it would eliminate it a hundred percent. No one we just can't say that, but the chance is very unlikely.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

And the the other thing we actually did was made our back supports, because we had two of them, we had all that surface area, we made them quite a bit shorter than a lot of the competitors because they had one long strip down the back. We made them short because if you were to land on your head and scorpion yourself, like have your back go backwards, eventually that thing's gonna be a knife, yeah, depending on where your back curvature is. So the higher we can make those, the less likely that is because your upper back doesn't rotate a whole bunch. It's mostly your lower back doing the doing the curving. So there were lots of areas like that where we just made little subtle changes that we think overall made a drastic difference in in the whole package. And even for us, we you know, it's a smaller overall package in height and width and weight and all of that, but it's sitting on a larger area of your body, yeah. And also, it's smaller and it's bigger. Yeah, we're really happy with the outcome of of how that turned out. So do you guys not so much the first generation, but the the newer yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously, the first one the first one was really heavy. We had to put that thing on a serious diet, but uh the the new one is literally half the weight of the first one.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Wow, okay. Um, do you guys have in your RD room there a uh dummy that gets an absolute workout going back and forth trying to break his neck and push it side to side?

SPEAKER_03 40:07

And no, no, not here. At the we tested a third-party lab in California.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:13

Um, so we let them do it all. We part of that was we didn't want to do it in-house because we didn't want to have full control over it.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 40:20

You know, that was one of the big problems with people believing the data. It's like, well, it's just your data, so you just make it look however you want it to look. And in our case, no, we didn't do that. We took it to a lab and we said test this for us and give us the results. And that, you know, we didn't have control over how that was going to come out, positive or negative. The the numbers were the numbers. We, you know, didn't have control on that. And 6D, when they tested their helmet, they actually used our test rig that that that facility built for us. So we didn't use we use an off-the-shelf hybrid three dummy with an instrumented neck and head and you know, all of that stuff, but we didn't use a pendulum swing or anything fixed like that. We they actually built our own rig for us where uh the hybrid three dummy was kind of like in a superman, like a flying position.

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:09

And they they would they would voice them up and they could do different heights to simulate different speeds. And then we run them into either a 90-degree wall or a 30-degree wedge. So those would simulate the two most likely in this instances of going over the bars onto like a straightaway is like a 30-degree wedge. That's about that angle that that takes place in. And then into a 90-degree wedge was like going over the bars into a jump face or a burn or rock or you know, whatever. Those were kind of the two deadly scenarios that we that we focused on. And with that dummy, we can have him face down, face up, um, no neck brace, no neck brace, different helmets, you know, whatever we want to throw on there and simulate different speeds. And yeah, so we we think that testing was much more real-world applicable than simple pendulum or fixed motion type of scenarios that you know, you don't really have that in the real world. You you could test some deflection of things, but it doesn't give you a lot of data. This gave us, you know, extreme data at extreme forces. I mean, we took it really far just to see what would happen, but uh yeah, yeah. So we think that was a better approach.

SPEAKER_01 42:19

It's it's one of those, it's one of those things where it's tricky because I I assume you guys will have a real world tester that you turn up with neck braces and you can get them to put it on and tell you about range of movement, bits and pieces, but you don't want them to crash. Hell no, don't don't actually test this thing in a crash scenario.

SPEAKER_03 42:35

How does it like say well it it it yeah, it depends because some of the early ones, I mean that's why I did a lot of it myself early on. It's like a 3D printed prototype or something. I'm like, I'll just go out and ride it because I know how to ride and I know what I'm looking for, at least, and I don't have to subject someone else if I do it myself. What am I gonna do? But yeah, so I did some of that myself, but the actual the second person to ever ride with one, and it was 3D printed, uh, was Villapoto. So we threw it on someone right away and said, Someone like Ave try it. Yep. Um so yeah, he was actually the second one to try it after me. And this was really close to production, though. I think we were I don't know if we'd started the tools yet, but we were really close. So this has been this had been a lot of iterations up to that point, and that was kind of like a final validation of like, hey, are we happy with this? What do you think? Um, before we went and pulled the trigger on it.

SPEAKER_01 43:35

Yeah. Uh speaking of people like Ryan Villapoto, I you know, I think every photo we saw during his kind of rain, he always had you know the neck brace on, or normally anyway, and it was kind of quite prominent. We talked before about Trey Kennard, you kind of always knew he it was there. I feel like when I look at a start gate at Supercross nowadays, there seems to be less, certainly less of the top top guys running a neck brace than there have. been pressing depressing. So what what's do you think that's an from an education perspective, or they're just unwilling to even try it? What why do you think that's the case?

SPEAKER_03 44:10

There's a handful of things at play. Um I think the quote unquote trend has died off like early on in the mid-2000s there it came on really strong and a lot of people were wearing them. And I think that the early ones just weren't that great and people kind of got turned off and then made a decision that oh I'm not a neck brace guy. Yeah even though the products from everyone my competitors me evolved and have gotten drastically better over the years. They just kind of wrote them off and go obvious that's just not for me.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:43

So that's one problem. The second one is that there's a quite a few guys that wanted to wear our product but couldn't because of team deals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

So there's a lot of behind the scenes I don't want to call it political stuff, but just sponsorship things that kind of squash it where a team might be sponsored by a competitor that makes everything and they go nope you can't wear yeah you can't wear any of that. So that's been a problem for quite a few deals over the years. Other people we've had try them they go ride they come off they go I can't even notice this thing's on it feels great. I'm like okay great let's do a deal nah I don't really want to say all right I don't you know so some of these guys it just they're just weighing the analysis I guess in their head and going no I just I'm not going to and a lot of the pushback or the excuse we get is I just feel better without it and I go well I feel great skinny dipping too because appropriate I don't know like I I get I get it. I mean if you want to but how far do you want to take that you know what I mean like if you have to draw the line somewhere I guess but it's like should we not wear boots should we not wear pants should we not wear I like I I I know I'm being half ridiculous but it's like there has to be a line somewhere and like I said you know it's people get a little bit scared like whenever one of these guys gets hurt then it's kind of like we get a few calls and people I want to try one again and you know they get a little spooked and then some time goes by and then they they they kind of get a little confident again and they take it off. And these things kind of come in waves a little bit and um like I said sometimes guys just they don't even want to talk about the potential of getting injured. They don't want even that to enter their consciousness that they're thinking about that because they think that's that's negative. And I I get that it's a it's a difficult topic especially when you're dealing with paralysis or death that's a those are serious topics. But at the same time I I know for me personally I rather do what I can to prevent that you know within reason.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

Yeah you're still taking a lot of risk you still hit the ground it's still gonna suck you know you can still break other bones things are still happening but you know I want to try and prevent the sinister stuff the best I can yeah the human psyche is such an interesting thing isn't it because like you said sometimes you get a scare you put the brace on or you put whatever it is on that you want and then over time your brain forgets the fear that you had in that moment or the pain. And so for some stupid reason as humans we go well I don't need this anymore. And I also think that's interesting you talked about well they said this is fine I never notice it on but I just don't want to wear it um you know or it's you know it's like so where do you go then? Do we just wear sand shoes while we you know runners while we go and race super cross because they're a lot more comfortable to walk around the house in than a pair of moto boots.

SPEAKER_03 47:46

Yeah like I said where do we where do you draw the line? You can take that pretty far and make it ridiculous but it's the same thing that I you know the analogy of the safety thing it's like okay well should we eliminate all the jumps we're all gonna ride you know 80 cc four strokes yeah we're all no one's leaving the ground no one's like how how ridiculous you want to be in in pursuit of some of these things and yeah you just have to draw the line somewhere and if people go well I don't need a neck brace okay okay I I hope you don't yeah I I hope you wear it and I hope you never need it. That that's best case scenario. Yeah um but you don't need it until you do yeah and you don't know when when that's coming or if it's coming or you know that's the hard part we can't predict these things we don't know but to me it's like I know if I'm riding I'm going to crash there's no doubt that at some point in some fashion small or big I'm going to make a mistake and you know I'm gonna succumb to gravity. That's where we're at. We we can't defeat gravity quite yet maybe in the future but uh for now that's kind of where we're at. So you know dress for the occasion and that's all we can really do. And as technology improves on the safety side that's kind of what we have to lean on because I don't really see another path out of injury prevention that that that makes sense to me at least.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

Yeah I agreed. So so how do we then you know it's a sad thought to think that contracts um rider ownership essentially because of money could get in the way of safety I asked you right at the start you know should things become compulsory and then that might force other team deals and sponsors to say well I have no control over this so yes you are now allowed to pick one of three or whatever it is. How how as an industry do we somehow get brands to work together better so that safety comes first and not money or financial gain because you know there's a there's some covering another brand or whatever it is. And and and I fully understand that you know we're talking about a lot of money here. Some of these writers that I'm sure that you guys have you know ever reached out to the the gear deals and other bits and pieces are are you know worth a lot of money to that brand and all of a sudden if there's something hanging around their neck well that's just not going to work because you know that's that's taking up space that we're paying for um it's a probably the million dollar question but is there do you ever see a world where the two can coexist still maintaining big money deals with teens but then also saying there is now a almost uh compulsory element of safety that you must wear because we know now that the data shows that these things work I think that would come right after you get money out of politics and everything.

SPEAKER_03 50:41

It's just never going to happen right like it's I I mean I never say never but I think it's just really difficult. I understand the position of these companies where they want to lock down a team and go hey we're exclusive with whatever the this brand is I understand that. But sometimes it does get in the way of rider safety too. I mean I I know riders personally that we tried to do deals with and the team goes no we have this deal with whoever and even if that company has a neck brace and the rider goes well I don't want to wear that I don't like that one. So they just wear nothing yeah and then I'm like man like I get it but you know it's it's unfortunate because it does get in the way and it has gotten in the way in the past for some of our guys and it just yeah I I yeah I don't know how to solve that but you're right it would be fantastic if the safety of the riders came first but I mean the it's hard to trump money with people put that first and you know yeah and a lot of times some of these you know if you're um there's only a couple high level riders less than a handful that could tell the team what they're gonna do. Yeah yeah you know not many people have that power most of these guys are like hey I'm just happy to be here and I'm happy to have a ride and any support at all and you know so there isn't a lot of luxury from that perspective until you get the right on top like Villapoto or someone like and there's very few of those guys that ever get there.

SPEAKER_00 52:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:08

You know so it's really tough for them to make their own choices. And other times too actually money for the rider has gotten in the way where they just want too much money. I just go hey I'm not sure sure I'm not a giant company here I can only do so much. Um so sometimes that's a hindrance which yeah I blame myself for I guess but either way you know when that gets in the way that's that's unfortunate too so it happens from both sides.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah it's funny because you know in the Formula One world the Hans device is compulsory because we know that it will prevent an injury um and it's easy it's easier to prove though. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:45

We have a lot of we have a lot of data but the Hans device as I explained before it's much more simple in its execution because it's I'm dumbing it down a little bit but basically only doing one thing it's mostly addressing whiplash. Sure. So it's much easier to prove one thing than six different things that we have to combat and it it's easier to explain it's easier to understand. You know they have a lot of things on their side from that perspective and you know they go hey we're already in a car we already have roll cages we already have safety harnesses they already have all these things in place that we already don't have just because we can't with our application and so it's really obvious to go hey we've already done all these things but we're still having this problem. Yeah and this addresses that problem so it it it's it's just easier to understand and kind of deal with mentally I think where in ours we can't have safety belts we can't have airbags on the motorcycle criteria that they have to work in I think it's easier to explain and and pinpoint where their problem lies or where the pain point is like I said they have harnesses they have seats they have roll cages they have all these things and they go oh we're still having this one type of injury when people hit the wall what can we do for this well they changed the wall a little bit they made those a little more compliant instead of rigid then they go okay in the car the head the the driver's head is doing this how do we solve that I think it was just an easier execution from them where we have so many variables yeah that when people crash they don't really pinpoint that oh that's the problem. Yeah you know they think oh well just circumstantial and whatever but I mean to me the data over time is really the answer. When you have a large enough data set it rules out all of the individual variables and the um uh one-off accidents that happen and all that you know when you have 10,000 injuries in this report you've dealt with hard packed and sand and mud and rain and big bikes and small bites and different ages and different you know levels of strength and cardio and ability and you know all of these factors are encompassed in that large data set. That's the beauty of a big set of data at least is all those things kind of fall away and they don't matter as much.

SPEAKER_00 55:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:00

When you have one incident and you go, well it was raining that day and he slipped and that's why he fell okay well yeah sure accidents happened but like I said in in 10,000 injuries you've dealt with you've ruled out all of that and it's become part of the data set.

SPEAKER_01 55:14

Yeah so if riders were more open to listening to the data that's come through there might be more of them using them. I I think to myself um personally I feel like if the governing bodies just said nope these are compulsory every one of you lining up on the gate will have a neck brace of some kind um be it any one of the brands there would be obviously huge pushback at the start but I feel like in 10 years time we would even forget that that conversation was had because I'm sure at some stage in car racing there was no Hans device and and they would have to uh introduce they had to introduce the Hans device when when I I raced um a side by side buggy um 10 years ago now we had this series that popped up in Australia where we could race a side by side on a motocross track it was so awesome and uh it was the first time ever I'd worn a Hans device I don't even know what it was and so Polaris kind of got me out there I did some some testing with them they stuck me in in the and I'd driven buggies you know for recreationally without a Hans device and it was fantastic. They stuck me in this buggy put a Hans device on and then I couldn't friggin' move my neck and I was like this is awful I feel like I all I'm doing is this and I've got to use my peripherals from to look side to side and so the difference for me between using one when actually racing and then using one in practice it's massive how much you can turn you can move your head. However when I use the Atlas neck brace I can move almost as good a as I can without it on so it actually I think personally impedes less than a Hans device for in car racing yet like you just discussed.

SPEAKER_03 56:48

That's by design because when you're seated in a in a car you don't really need to move that much like when you're on a motorcycle you need to move a lot. Yeah corners and jumps and you know all the things that we have to do to maneuver the motorcycle you need that range of motion. Or in a car you really don't and if you're in a race car yeah NAS car going around a circle you you're not doing big shoulder checks. You don't need to move in a side by side you might a little bit more if you're in a racing environment or doing that. But yeah the movement requirement is significantly less yeah for for anything seated.

SPEAKER_01 57:19

Yeah okay it's funny it's still it still got in the way and I was just like but it never crossed my mind that this is a this is I shouldn't have this on I don't need this it was you know as soon as I because they were so used to running them as soon as I hopped in the buggy I was just like oh this thing must be brilliant at keeping me safe so let's do it and it's just I I think it's gonna take you know same with air vests you know we're seeing them to start to become compulsory now because they believe that they protect the organs there's a price issue there that's when we chatted with our local governing body as to why they won't make them compulsory in Australia is forcing you know let riders that are essentially privateers but racing in the professional classes to fork out thousands for this product a year is is unfair but um yeah it's it's it's it's uh so I I understand that the governing body that implements it or anyone who implements it will get crucified and killed and probably won't last very long in their position. But you know is it an unfortunately kind of the sword they're gonna have to die on in order to save protect riders potentially one of the things that you mentioned earlier as well is the whole prevent prevention rather than the cure thing. And I think that's one area as dirt bike riders that we've got it wrong is that we always resort to these things after we've had the accident or after we've had the scare. I'll give you a perfect example I was chatting with uh Mobius and they were talking about how they have a wrist brace and I've never used the wrist brace I've broken both my wrists and they said they had this exact conversation with Ken and they were like you know you you can wear this thing after the awful arm injuries that he's had and he was originally pushing back against it and then eventually he kind of agreed to put this thing on and he realized that actually it's not impeding on my range of movement really at all and they said to him it's a preventative measure it's actually not a meant to be reactive you were you should have been wearing this before you had your your wrist accidents. Now they were so catastrophic whether or not they would have helped who knows but um he is now wearing it they said and you see him in every podium interview and he's you know they're asking him questions he's still got the thing on his wrist and they indicated to me like no his wrist is fine he doesn't he's got he he he's got range of he's got everything in there that means he doesn't need to wear it he's wearing it now as a preventative measure um yeah it's it's an interesting thing that like we as dirt bite riders we can't see what Ken has obviously now seen with the wrist brace thing where he knows he doesn't need it to ride it 100% however he sees it that it actually has value as a preventative measure. And I don't know how we change that psyche among dirt bite guys.

SPEAKER_03 59:50

It's not just dirt bikes I mean that's human nature I mean people love to be sold a cure but no one wants to be sold a prevention the same way that that bleeds into everything whether it's a a diet someone trying to lose weight they don't want to go to the gym and go for a run and eat healthy. Give me a pill give me a pill give me a shot I don't want to do the work so you know that that's all of just human nature for whatever reason I don't know if technology or things have gotten so easy in modern life that you know we don't have to work that hard to get food or any basic need now is is very readily available. So we've engineered out kind of the work yeah to do these things and I mean on that front like just regular life was enough to get exercise before.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:33

Because you're out farming and you're doing things like just preparing food and going to get food and whatever whatever the case may be that was a workout. You didn't need to go to the gym you that was built into life and we've kind of engineered that all out yep and now we have a different problem. So people love cures people don't love preventions and that's it's a very difficult psyche to overcome and I I feel the same way but um I mean you get injured a little bit or you have a health problem or you overcome something you learn that in yourself and then you kind of you switch to the other way and you go hey it's a lot easier to prevent this stuff than it is to deal with it after.

unknown 1:01:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:09

And that's what people don't understand. Like we have some fantastic cures for all kinds of things but um and we're really close to that on paralysis too with with technology with brain chips and spinal chips and you know that that that'll be a day surgery here soon. But um wow it's still not one that I'd want to get yeah you know I'd rather be functioning you know no different than losing a limb or whatever. It's like I'd rather have the the regular one for now. The tech's not that good it's not better than what what what you have already so yeah I don't know it that's a tough one to crack and I I wish more people would care more about the preventative because it's so much easier to prevent than it is to cure no matter what yeah you're talking about yeah so interesting isn't it yeah it is so much easier to prevent than it is to cure I couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Um hey Atlas are doing boots and chest protectors now when like I said where I I was I just see Atlas as neck braces that's kind of what they've always been known for um why the move I get the chest protector thing right they've got to interact with each other because if you've got one brand of chest protector and one brand of neck brace or whatever it is and they're not kind of fitting together properly and it keeps them pushing up on your chin or whatever it is it's not going to feel comfortable. So I guess that's the reason you went into chest protectors because we also understand that chest protectors can prevent you from breaking ribs and other bits and pieces. But yeah talk us through the whole chest protector how it works with a neck brace and how it's been designed to make things better with the neck brace situation.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:42

Yeah being able to integrate with our own product is is the best case scenario it's still man that chest protector problem is a really tough problem. You know it that's why you see every company giant ones fox whoever it's like they get a new protector every year because no matter what you build it's wrong. Yeah like you build something it fits me but if I put it on you something doesn't work and vice versa and you go well I'm gonna make it fit better for you well that doesn't fit me. And it's like it's it's kind of this never ending problem where they're never right no matter how good you make it. So it's a really tough one. Uh and then if you throw the integration with a neck brace it's really challenging.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:22

So yeah that's a really difficult problem but for us obviously the more we can make it built for ours the best that integration is going to be rather than using a competitor and mixing something in.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

But uh the also the way we design the brace with the chest supports, you know, you can kind of slide those underneath the chest plate as well and tuck them in or same with the back they're really thin um and you have the ability to do that. So our ability to work with other protectors is actually pretty high. I can I can get it to work with pretty much anything if you're standing here that's hard to explain to people globally how to do that. But you can tuck it in, you can wear it on top um so we have some options that that makes it pretty good. So that integration actually started way back with with the brace parts yeah even way before we were making chest protectors. But uh yeah making our own is inevitable step we just came up with a whole range of new ones adult stuff um our new softbacks that we call adapted impact um so that's more of a softback like a D3O type situation. Yep so we have some hybrid protectors now and yeah we're gonna keep expanding that range the boots that was another we're starting to branch out and more we're pretty much going to do everything except gear. Yeah so we'll be a neutral branded protection company that makes everything yeah and the boots it kind of felt it might seem unnatural from the outside but it was just the next thing that was ready. So that's when it came out it was a it uh we're gonna fill in all the gaps but some things take more time than others and um that one was just ready earlier than than others so it came out. Cool I um and on on the safety side I wanted to touch on something that I missed that you know with people not believing the data and that sort of thing on the neck brace side to me the the most interesting part is that it's been 20 years of positive data and no negative data has ever been produced. Yeah other than an anecdotal accident which like I said doesn't an N of one doesn't prove anything it's an unfortunate accident but in a data set that doesn't that doesn't show you a trend or what the likely outcome is so to me in in 20 years there's been no negative data set ever put together produced that I've ever seen if someone has one please send it to me but in my mind it hasn't been produced because it can't be produced. Yeah it's it's it's not a negative outcome there's a net positive outcome and a drastic one. So to me the the burden of proof at this point is on all the people that don't believe or don't think they were Show me that it doesn't work, please. Then that'll help me make it better.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:04

You know, if if if I can poke poke all, I've tried to poke every hole there is that you can poke in it, and I can't seem to come up with a negative result, you know, because of the product.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:14

So yeah, it's tough.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:16

It's it's that idea of innocent until proven guilty. Like you need to prove the guilt. You need to prove the the wrongdoing or the or how it's it's and yeah, you know, I I the same kind of idea. I now that you some of the uh ways that accidents happen, some of the things that you've mentioned, I haven't seen any conclusive evidence that oh, I can see where the neck price imprint is on that chest, collarbone, sternum. I can see where the neck, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:42

Um hey, we mean I liken it to seat to seat belts too. I mean, seatbelts took decades to become compulsory in in uh in cars. People fought tooth and nail against them, they hated them. And then at a certain point, the data was just so overwhelming that they're like, you know, this is a public safety problem. We have to do this. But just like neck braces, I mean, there's outliers. If you crash your car into a lake and you can't get your seatbelt off, you're gonna drown.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:08

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:09

But that's not yeah, you know, that's not the regular use case. And then a large data set, that's such a micro sliver of uh of accidents that are happening in there that on the whole you're still way better off. So it's it's those kinds of things, and people get fixated on those and try and paint the whole picture based on that negative outcome. But that's not that's not the case.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:31

Yeah, and so many variables in situations like that. If you were to pull it across the dirt bikes and neck braces, that you know, you still don't know what would have happened in that car accident had you not been wearing the seatbelt before you even hit the hit the water, whatever it is, but the you know, the equivalent for us with dirt bikes. So yeah, I I I totally agree with you. Um the I I like to talk about like future stuff for um a lot of brands like this because I know you guys don't just think what's good what we're gonna do for the next six to twelve months, it's all about you know how we could can we set ourselves up for the next five to ten years. Um do where do you see rider protection going in the next five to ten years? And is there we've seen this in the um inflatable chest protector stuff, but is there AIs, sensors, smart gear stuff being uh talked about in neck protection, neck brace protection? Have you guys ever looked at the idea of using AI? And yeah, where do you see it in the next five to ten years, the neck side of things?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:25

We have, and I think that there's definitely gonna be tech. I mean, there's no question about that there'll be sensors and there'll be all those sorts of things. The sensor side is better on a helmet than it is on a brace, just because it's easier to measure forces from a helmet, because no matter where the sensor is positioned, you're gonna get the force reading from it hitting the ground because it's one structure.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:48

With a neck brace, it's really challenging to rig it with sensors because you're dealing with multiple forces in different directions. Um, so that would be very difficult, but you can get data from the helmet sensor on how the neck braces work. Like you can correlate some of that, uh, and that can be helpful. So it's more of a helmet play that I think there will definitely be more tech involved than there could be. The only difficult part with that is there's not a lot of um incentive for the end user.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:20

It doesn't really provide them too much valuable information. It's better for the manufacturer because if we have thousands of elements out there that we're collecting data from out of all these crashes, you know, we can look at that and we can go, here's the trends of what we're seeing, here's all these, here's how we can improve our product or where it's coming up short, or a whole host of things. You know, gathering data like that at that level would be fantastic for the manufacturer. But again, not overly useful for the the end user. There are some cases where people make some sensors and go on helmets, and when you crash, if you uh if it experiences enough forces, it will call your emergency contact for you and some things like that. But it has but it has to be you know within Bluetooth range of your cell phone, which most of us don't ride with our phone, so that's not helpful for a motocross athlete necessarily, maybe off-road. Um, so there's some stuff like that where there are some use cases where it's good for the the end user, but uh adding that much expense into the product is a tough ask for a consumer. You know, I think if you did a program, you're like, hey, we're looking for a thousand volunteers to, you know, we're gonna give it to you, you you could accomplish that. Yeah, but uh yeah, actually building it in, it's gonna have to come down in cost and be be a little more palatable. I think Fly did one though. I think Fly has one where they built in a um a four sensor into a helmet.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:52

So there are it it it is possible and it it yeah, it adds about uh maybe a hundred bucks or so to the cost of the helmet give or take.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:02

So it's not a crazy expense, but you know, on top of an already expensive helmet or things, it's you know, it can be challenging.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:09

For the for the airbag side and body protection, I'm not a huge believer in the airbag thing for a bunch of reasons. I think that we're not in a car, and an airbag in a car makes a lot of sense because you have two things on your side. You have number one, you're in a bubble already. You're in a roll cage or a structure. You have a crumple zone in the front of the car that buys you time that we don't have on a motorcycle. Those that millisecond of that crunch is enough to deploy it and get it to you. Um, you don't need to reuse it because if your airbag goes off in your car, the car is likely totaled and not going to move after that. So you only need one use. Um on a motorcycle, that's a lot more challenging. You don't have the crumple zone, you don't have a roll cage. So you need to have a trigger based on an algorithm, and it has to know when you're gonna hit the ground before you hit the ground. And I think that some of the guys that have done these have done a good job figuring that out, but it has a lot of false fires, yeah, that I've seen at least. You know, and but my other problem is that a lot of times we crash two or three times in a race. Yeah, you don't know which one of those is gonna be the big one.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

You you might tip over in a corner and the vest inflates because the news you crashed, and then you might get up and two straightaways later you might go over the bars on a triple. And now you don't have now you don't have it. So, you know, it you have to get that thing to fire multiple times in a very short span, which is difficult because you either need more canisters or you know, it's not that easy to to do. You have a heat issue because you have basically layers of plastic that have to create a bag.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:03

Um, that's very difficult to solve. You can't just poke holes in it.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:06

So it's hot. Even if you distill it down to its purest form where all you're wearing is a slim little bag and it's going to inflate when you need it, it's still gonna be way too hot.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:17

So even in its purest form, there's that. And then there's also a problem to me that if it's just the bag by itself in that pure form, now you have a puncture problem as well. You have, you know, that's why chest protectors are hard plastic and all that, because we have puncture. You hit a foot peg or a fence or you know, whatever, that could be a real problem. So and and to me, if you have to combine an airbag with a CE level two or level one chest protector plate, whatever configuration, now you're kind of wearing two chest protectors.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:50

And I I know the thing, it's like, okay, well, it's after the airbag inflates, you still have that as a backup. It's like, okay, well, I don't know, if it can't just be an airbag that feels like you're wearing nothing, to me, it doesn't really solve, it doesn't solve the problem. And like I said, even if you have that, you still have a puncture problem. So and no matter what configuration you have, you can't wear a neck press with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:12

So I to me that doesn't it's interesting, it's cool, it makes a fantastic demo. And when it works, it works.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:21

But I just I see that as a more of a lateral move more than a step forward.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:27

It's like I said, it's interesting and it's fun, but I just don't know. I don't know, it's so much different than the car scenario that that it's that it works really well in that yeah, I I don't know. I just don't see it at this point.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:43

Okay, so Atlas don't have, by the sounds of things, then, a um inflatable vest slash chest protector that in the development to go with their neck braces or anything like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:55

Not at not at this time. I don't like the idea of not being able to wear a neck brace. That doesn't sit well with me.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:01

Um, because like I said, the the three areas you're gonna get hurt are head, neck, and infernal organs. So if you're if you're eliminating the potential to protect the neck and you potentially have a puncture problem, uh you're eliminating two of those three. And I I don't I don't love that. That doesn't sit, that doesn't sit well with me. Like I said, it doesn't feel like a step forward. It feels like an interesting step and it's fun. And I I think for Moto GP for street bike, it makes total sense. Yeah, because those those guys like cars, they usually crash once and they're done. Yeah, you know, the bikes totaled or whatever. For that, it makes complete sense to me. Yeah, but in Moto, that doesn't, I don't know. I just don't know if it's gonna be the the red path.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:43

Yeah, it's still one of those.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:44

I could be wrong.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:45

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's still one of those ones where I know that they're kind of still researching and looking into with one of my good mates and uh economists for ADB is Daniel Sanders, uh, who races Dakar. And um he had that big crash in January this year where he in the middle of Dakar, he dropped off a sand ledge essentially. And and I was chatting with him afterwards, he said his vest went off and he thinks it protected his sternum from breaking because he kind of landed on the nav tower on the sternum. Um and so and so it's kind of worked in that sense. Uh, but yes, I I know what you mean. I'm I mean, once it if you're in a super cross race, for example, and you have a tip over and it goes off in that tip over, but then you have three more crashes, but the third crash is the worst, then it's really hasn't it done anything to achieve you know what it's meant to achieve.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:31

So yeah, unfortunately. And to me, that there's another product. Uh I think they took it off the market because it didn't work, but in Europe there was a bicep helmet called the Hovedig.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:40

I don't know if you've seen this before. And it it was it it it hit it was really it was actually really cool in the demo that looks really trick, but it was kind of like uh a scarf or like a little neck, you know, those neck pillows that people are playing. Yeah, it's sort it sort of looked like that. It had a nice little decorative cover that was all fashion-y, and and uh it was an airbag helmet. So when you would crash on your commuter bicycle in Europe, how all those guys ride bicycles, it would inflate and come up over your head and be this giant, this giant inflatable helmet. And uh you can look it up, I'm sure you can find videos of it. It it looked really, really fancy, but yeah, people it showed videos of guys going over the bars on the street, and then this thing would inflate and pop out. But uh, I don't think it ever got any traction just because it and it was very small, it was like nothing, but uh yeah, it just never took off. And I think, like I said, it you still have a puncture problem. You you have to rely on it going off correctly, and you know, to to me, developing the algorithm to decide whether a guy, a freestyle guy, is doing a backflip Superman C grab or you're crashing. I I don't know. I feel like that's that's a tough ask. Yeah, and maybe maybe they're further ahead on it than I than I'm aware of, but it just seems like for our application, I don't know that that's the right path. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:03

Um, that mountain bike helmet or the the the push bike helmet sounds interesting. It reminds me of a movie in the early 90s, Space Balls, where they all the guys in the that's how big it looked.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:13

That's yeah, that's how big it looked.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:15

Um yeah, it was huge. Um, hey, okay, last question. Conscious of it kept you for so long. Last question I got for you then is um who neck braces in order of who you think should really look at look into wearing a neck brace, read the data, you know, figure it out for themselves in terms of disciplines within our sport. I mean, it probably seems obvious to me that the faster speed, more high-impact sports would be better off running a neck brace. I think of events like Erzburg or some of the hard enduro guys where they're hardly crawling uh and they spend most of their time sweating, you know, as hard as they can to push a bike up the hill rather than ride it. I assume in order of um importance, they would be lower down the list than say someone in supercross where you can go from third or fourth gear to stop dead in the in half a second. Who who, in terms of skill, age, but also discipline and neck braces going to be most beneficial to kind of top down?

SPEAKER_03 1:19:12

Yeah, I mean it's really it's funny, it's the opposite of what a lot of people think. The slower speed is worse than the high speed. Okay. Like if you have a if you have a if you're going down a straightaway and you swap and you go over the bars and you you're going end over, end over, and you know, you're having a big tumble like that, that's actually safer than a sudden stop because you're continuing motion and you're gonna slow, you're gonna get you're gonna get bumped and bruised, and yeah, it's gonna suck. But but you kind of like a rock skipping on water, you're gonna keep going, and that continuous motion is actually way less damaging. You know, if you like said you go over the bars and supercross and you land into a berm, it it's ugly. Yeah, you know, and that's that's I consider supercross low speed. That's not a you know, it's it's pretty tight and all of that. So lower speed is actually worse than super high speed for injury, generally speaking, unless you hit a wall or you you hit something, some other inanimate object. So yeah, anything uh anything that that applies to, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:10

So yeah, that's would be top of the list. And it, I mean, yeah, I don't know the stats on paralysis in let's say supercross versus hardeno versus you know different disciplines of the sport. I'd have to look at that. Um I mean, I actually an interesting anecdote is the the sport with the highest amount of um severe neck injuries is cheerleading.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:35

Is that right? Because I keep dropping them while they flip them up in the air.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:38

Yeah, well, you got a you got a little girl, you flip her up in the air and she lands on a hard gym floor. There's no protection, there's no there's no nothing. So yeah, I mean, not that they should be wearing helmets and neck braces necessarily, but I mean, it's an interesting stat to think about. Yeah, they're not gonna be able to do that. Yeah, no, no, but yeah, it's yeah, anyways, it's off topic. But yeah, the yeah, I mean, really, anyone who's concerned about injuring themselves, like I said, I think you know, you can get paralyzed, it's not that difficult you know, on a motorcycle when you have an accident to achieve that, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:13

Yeah, certainly is. Um, oh Brady, well, mate, we we've kept you for an hour and a half, so I'm conscious it won't keep you any longer. That's such an interesting discussion around neck braces. It always is. I mean, it's it's been you know a topic for the last 16, 17, 18 years since neck braces really kind of uh came into our industry uh as to whether or not you should wear them. And that and that's been the same kind of discussion around so many other protective devices that people have chosen to wear or not to wear. And I guess there are a lot of myths out there and rumors around these things that are really hard to dispel because our industry is can kind of get a bit uh bit insulant uh and a bit incestuous, and so people kind of will listen to someone and pick it as gospel without any data or research kind of behind it. So it's been really cool to clear up some of those misconceptions, I think, today.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:58

Um lies always spread faster than truth. They do keep up.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:05

Totally, and that's the hardest part in our industry, is that that that that's probably our biggest uh hurdle to overcome. And I think it was really interesting what you said about you know that there may be more uh high profile riders wearing neck braces in particular, um, if it wasn't for the fact that you know team contract deals get in the way or for whatever else it is, for no financial obligations, because you when you think about it, your safety surely is more important than um more money at the end of your racing career. So man, it'd be awesome to see and it it's also cheap insurance.

SPEAKER_03 1:22:37

You know, these guys don't realize, you know, if you if you have a neck injury, that is either the end of your career or really big burden, and it's gonna prevent you from making money. Yes, you know, so to wear something that you can get given for not only for free, but can probably get paid to wear at that at that level, you know, it yeah, it's cheap insurance. So, you know, you have to look at that for what that's worth and what you think what you want to do with your career. I mean, most of these guys, you have a very short career in a sport, so you got to maximize every bit of that that you can. And staying injury free is a large part of that that I think gets overlooked.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:14

Definitely. And I I probably probably I haven't even thought of the insurance concept that your career will end. And for 99.999% of writers out there, you're not gonna make enough money to then live off uh for the rest of your life. So you're gonna need a career, and if you've had a neck injury, that can significantly impact your ability to earn money.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:31

Um, you know, after not just during the sport, but after the sport. What are you gonna do after? If you're paralyzed, or you're this, or you have other limitations, or even just limited mobility, whatever it is that could limit your yes, what you're gonna do after.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:44

Yeah, certainly. Um, all right, that's been so interesting, Brady. I uh yeah, I look forward to this one kind of going live, I'm sure. The neck brace thing is always a good topic for people to discuss. So I'm keen to get the word out there. Um, yeah, we really appreciate you coming on. We look forward to seeing kind of what the next thing is in store for Atlas. Like you said, there's other protective gear coming, so that's kind of cool. We look forward to seeing what else is there. But mate, thanks for coming on today. It'd be cool to catch up next time, especially if Atlas have something interesting to the market that's new uh for Atlas anyway. It'd be cool to catch up and talk about that as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:15

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks a lot for having me and for all your listeners out there. If you guys have questions that we didn't cover on this or you want to know something, reach out to us. I'm happy to talk with you and explain something that you may not know or you know, whatever we can. Just uh yeah, reach out. We're happy to help.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:31

It's a great idea to have a contact email that they can send emails to if they've got questions.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:36

Yeah, just info at atlasbrace.com.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:39

Perfect. All right, awesome.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:40

And that'll make it make that'll make its way to me and I'll help you out.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:43

Great. Well, thanks so much, Brady, for coming on, and we'll catch up with you soon.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:47

Great, thank you.