[bradzdotcom]

"So, wear your helmet. Spend money on a brace. It may or may not help you from a neck injury."

exactly, and thanks for that!

yea, that was my original point, and reason for this post in the first place.
many of my friends, professional supercross/motocross racers are in wheelchairs.
some would be in chairs, regardless of whether or not they wore a leatt brace.
others would have gotten back up, grabbed their bike, and ridden on.

the brace is only about $600.
and, because i like to ride in canyons, most of the injuries i and my friends experience are more off-road than on road.
we run out of asphalt, and catapult ourselves into the dirt, to meet trees, rocks, ditches, etc....
while we like to think of ourselves as street riders, many/most of our injuries are actually along the exact same lines as dirt guys.
when we f-up, that's where we instantly go...from street rider to dirt guy.

the leatt brace is only about $600. it doesn't interfere with head movement. it doesn't weigh much. it doesn't generate wind noise. and although i haven't gotten mine yet, my friends who have them tell me that it's absolutely no big deal...very easy to adapt to. they claim it takes about 3-4 laps around a MX track...and they forget it's even there.

so is it a CYA kinda thing? maybe.
for me personally, as one who's been accused of being a "safety nazi", it's become a must-have.
because of my addiction to riding tight/twisty canyon roads, i've been involved in more street bike-that-went-off-road incidents than i care to recount.
at least three fatalities, all with broken necks, caused by riders having gone off-the-road and found themselves ill-equipped to deal with the situation (they "augered" in).
one (fairly recent) nasty one was with gerhard in central CA.

i just think that the leatt brace is one more piece of equipment that can help people avoid debilitating injuries.
while we like to think of ourselves as street riders, and we "dress for the crash", in reality, the crash we dress for isn't always the crash we experience...we dress for a street crash...and many times we experience what actually is a dirt bike crash...and to make matters worse our "street-turned-dirt bike" is WAY heavier and more cumbersome than the average dirt bike.
when our street bikes come along, after we leave the pavement and go off into the dirt, then play "tag you're it", it's way worse than tossing a motocross bike.
they weigh more, they toss us farther, they pounce harder, etc...

while i appreciate all the charts/graphs/statistics that people have contributed to this thread....i still have to deal with many close friends who will spend the rest of their lives in a wheelchair.

the leatt brace may not be the end-all, cure-all. i'm sure that the technology will continue to move forward.

but for $600...which is LESS than the cost of a wheelchair, not to mention the medical bills it takes to even get to that point....doesn't it seem like something that's worth checking out?

that was why i brought up this thread and this product in the first place.
my friend david bailey, who's in a wheelchair (and by the way has won the ironman marathon in a chair) felt it was a potentially good enough product to support and promote it.

like david, i've never met the leatt people. don't own stock.
i'm just a customer.

i just think it's something worth looking at, talking about, and (at least in my case and four or five others on this board), feel that it's worth buying/having.

just in case. just because.