Even a bump in the car at speeds as slow as 5mph can result in whiplash, often leading to visits to the doctor, time off work and pains in the neck, back and head. And all that from the tiniest of collisions - collisions often so minor that the car won't even have lost a bumper or a number plate.



So if us normal folk are getting hurt in road accidents at crawling speed, how on earth do motor racing drivers manage to walk away from terrifying looking smashes that occur at immense speeds? Obviously there are some tragic exceptions, but the majority of racing drivers involved in high-speed accidents climb out of their wrecked cars, dust themselves off and trudge back to the pits with not a whiplash injury in sight.

If you or I had just hit a wall of tyres or bounced off another car at over 100mph, it's fair to say that whiplash would probably be the last thing on our minds. But today's top-of-the-range racing cars give the driver enormous protection, usually enabling him to survive uninjured inside what has, in all essence, become a giant lump of expensive scrap metal.

Just to demonstrate the point, it's worth casting the mind back several weeks to the Formula One San Marino Grand Prix at the infamous Imola circuit. This is the track that took the life of Roland Ratzenberger and the legendary Ayrton Senna more than a decade ago, and although the circuit has been made distinctly less dangerous since that fateful May afternoon, it still has some wicked bends and testing turns.

Anyway, April 23rd 2006 witnessed a car crash involving Christijan Albers that saw his MF1-Toyota spinning through the air before crashing to the ground and coming to rest face-down in the gravel. The Dutchman's car had been clipped at the rear by an overeager Japanese driver, and such a devastating accident would surely have killed someone in a regular road car.

The 27-year-old described the car accident, saying, "I think I went upside down about four times. It all went really quick and before I knew it I was in the gravel.

After I walked away from the crash I saw my car looked completely destroyed, but I haven't even got a bruise on my body. That's how safe Formula One is nowadays."

Albers' lack of personal injuries is indeed testament to the unbelievable protection that modern racing cars offer. Formula One drivers sit in a carbon fibre cocoon-like structure that forms the basis of the car, which, constructed from hundreds of separate components, is designed to protect the driver in even the most furious of impacts. Ensuring that the driver's head is protected is a rigid hoop protruding several inches above his head, intended to hit the ground first if the car should roll over.

All the safety devices in the world are no good if the driver is still going to be thrown around so violently in an accident that a whiplash injury is almost a guarantee. To protect drivers from getting whiplash, Formula One cars are now fitted with a specialist preventative system as standard.

Designed in the United States, the Head And Neck Support (HANS) system features a carbon fibre collar which is connected securely to the upper body, with straps attaching it to the helmet. It is intended to prevent the head from being thrown forward in an accident and, much to the delight of the drivers, has proved to be a resounding success in the past few years. Whiplash injury used to be an all too common occurence in motor racing, but thanks to HANS, they are slowly but surely becoming a thing of the past.

With modern technological developments advancing at an astounding rate, it might not be long before a HANS-type system is seen in all regular cars, cutting down the hundreds of thousands of whiplash injuries suffered on our roads every year, and saving a lot of people a massive pain in the, erm, neck.