HANS inventor Robert Hubbard dies

Dr. Robert Hubbard

"Very saddened to learn Dr. Robert Hubbard, inventor of the HANS Device, died this evening. He was at home surrounded by loved ones. His invention has been called the most important safety advance in the last 20 years and has saved a great many people from injury or worse. RIP Dr. Bob."

-On the creation of HANS

"Hubbard and Jim Downing, a driver himself and Hubbard’s brother-in-law, developed what’s known as the Head and Neck Support device, or HANS, in the mid-1980s, following the death of a racer friend who died as a result of a skull fracture.

Hubbard and Downing recognized that racers were being killed because their torsos were restrained but their heads were not. Although unknown at the time, this has been the mechanism of basilar skull fractures, the most common cause of racers' deaths."