Statement from Trevor Ashline, President, Safety Solutions, Regarding NASCAR's Ban of Hutchens Device

CONCORD, N.C., Jan. 5, 2005 -- The following is a statement from Trevor Ashline, President, Safety Solutions, regarding NASCAR's ban of Hutchens Device:

I have spent the last three years working closely with NASCAR officials to successfully develop and distribute head and neck restraint systems that provide life-saving protection to its drivers. While one of my systems, the Hutchens Device, consistently met NASCAR's testing requirements during those three years, I applaud their recent decision to raise the bar and mandate the use of only those head and neck restraint systems that meet or exceed the stringent testing criteria recently developed by NASCAR for the SFI Foundation. The Hutchens Device was among those systems tested last November that has not yet met the SFI specification. The Hutchens Device will be submitted to SFI at the end of January 2005.

Over the past three years, we have developed and introduced the next generation of head and neck restraint systems, called the R3 (http://lfttech.com/). As one of the products that were submitted to NASCAR last November, the R3 was the first head and neck restraint system to exceed the SFI 38.1 specification after it was written. Yet, to date, the only restraint system selected by NASCAR has been the HANS Device. If there were additional criteria beyond the SFI specs that NASCAR used to make their selection, I am unaware of it.

The R3 has been providing superior head and neck protection to drivers in other auto racing sanctioning bodies such as Local Tracks, SCCA, IMCA, NHRA, IHRA, APBA, HSR, Porsche Club and USAC. As the first to pass the SFI specification test last November, I am anxious to learn what additional NASCAR criteria the R3 needs to meet in order to provide the same level of superior protection to NASCAR drivers.

For more information on the R3 restraint please go to http://www.lfttech.com/ .