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Motorsports-Related Injuries
In professional motorsports, the consistency of impacts due to crashes has been an increasingly notable concern regarding drivers’ health in recent years. Racing drivers are consistently exposed to high G-Forces during driving, and the same to a much higher degree as a result of impacts. As with any extreme sport, racing does come with a high risk of injury, and over the years there have been various measures implemented across motorsports in order to advance driver safety. This includes the HANS Device, Formula One's Halo, and IndyCar's Aeroscreen. However, these developments were all either developed or adopted as a result of fatalities suffered in motorsport, such as that of Dale Earnhardt and Jules Bianchi. Developments aimed at mitigating the more subtle and less-severe injuries have not received widespread attention.

One of the more recent waves of an increase in driver safety concerns began in 2022 in the United States. The NASCAR Cup Series debuted the “Next Gen” car, which featured an extremely rigid body that did not deform as much as the previous generations of car on impact, thus transferring more energy from an impact to the driver inside the car. This result caused many drivers to say wrecks and impacts that appeared minor to a spectator were some of the hardest impacts they had experienced in their career. Two drivers, Kurt Busch and Alex Bowman, suffered concussions from impacts such as this. Busch was forced to sit out for the rest of the season and ultimately retired permanently from professional racing after his crash. Bowman missed the final handful of races for the season following his crash. However, the prevalence of concussions in motorsports is not a new or recent development that was exposed with the 2022 car.. A 2020 study found that 31% of the drivers in the study reported suffering from concussions as a result of the sport. Medical personnel in the racing community echoed this, with 81% of the medical personnel that were surveyed reporting experience with concussed drivers. The incidence of concussions in motorsports is not thoroughly documented however, and there have been concerns about the training and education for both drivers and trackside personnel brought up in the past. As recently as 2017, there have been calls for more thorough and focused research on the sport’s concussion incidence and the medical practices surrounding it.

Despite this frequency of mild traumatic brain injuries, some aspects of a driver’s ability do not appear to be significantly affected. A 2021 study of 13 IndyCar series drivers(roughly half of the full-time field) that were involved in at least 2 crashes over the course of the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons found that there was no significant change in a driver’s oculomotor ability. However, there is a need for more in-depth research covering more drivers and looking at more than one single trait in order to fully understand the effects of these impacts. As stated in the article, drivers are consistently exposed to concussive forces and any potential degradation in their ability to process information and make decisions rapidly and decisively further increases the risk of more crashes, and therefore more injuries.