Perhaps it’s inevitable that motor racing once again faces a new frontier when it comes to safety. The recent press conference outlining the causes behind the tragic death of NHRA driver Eric Medlen has put the problem of head movement and brain injuries back into the center stage.

Just when we thought this problem had been resolved by the use of cockpit surrounds, the HANS device and soft walls i.e. the SAFER barrier, Medlen died from the sideways movement of his helmeted head in a freak testing incident aboard one of the Funny Cars of John Force’s team. A punctured tire that remained on the rim caused the severe oscillation of the vehicle that cost Medlen his life.

It was just over twenty years ago that this writer first started to focus on head injuries when a longtime friend and competitor, Butch Lindley, suffered a crippling brain injury from side impact in a short track crash. The two-time NASCAR Late Model Sportsman champion (which became the Busch Series) spent several years comatose in a hospital before succombing to the injury. Not long afterward, another longtime friend and competitor, Gene Felton, was lucky to survive a broken neck suffered at Riverside during a Trans-Am weekend.

Sadly, it wasn’t until the deaths of superstar drivers Ayrton Senna and Dale Earnhardt that the safety landscape eventually was changed and the attitude of sanctioning bodies. Otherwise, we probably still wouldn’t have many of the improvements now in place.

In one of those quirky aspects of the legal system, the previous fear was losing a major law suit over the death of any participant. If you don’t have a safety rule, went this old school reasoning, the safety rule can’t fail and leave the door open for legal recourse.

In 2000, for one sad example of this old school thinking, NASCAR initially tried to build a temporary facility as its technical center in a rented building following three deaths from head and neck injuries in each of its major series in 2000, including that fatal crash of Adam Petty. Not until Earnhardt died from a similar head injury at Daytona in 2001 did NASCAR commit to its current full-scale Technical Center and the commitment to driver safety that has resulted in the Car of Tomorrow.

Last week’s media conference to provide background detail to Medlen’s accident included Graham Light of the NHRA as well as John Force, team members and John Melvin, an engineer and longtime consultant on the biomechanics of racing injuries. This line-up and the media conference itself indicates the sanctioning body is taking the problem very seriously. It also bodes well for an assault on the last remaining frontier of serious head injuries in racing: the sudden sideways movement of the head under g-loading.

The HANS device has caused a literal revolution in safety by directly curing the problem of the forward launching of the head. (I would mention an alternative to the HANS, but it looks far more like a circumvention of the HANS patent than an equally protective device.) But no head restraint currently on the market fully addresses the issue of the sideways movement of the head.

Higher cockpit surrounds in F1 and American single seaters, as well as better seats in sprints and midgets plus NASCAR vehicles also contribute more safety to the issue of sideways head movement — which generally is more of a yaw than a direct “shoulder to shoulder” type of movement due to human anatomy. The SAFER barriers, by reducing g-loads upon impact, also indirectly help reduce the transfer of g-loads.

Another development to be applauded in the short term is the use of foam inserts in the door of NASCAR’s new Cars of Tomorrow and one additional steel bar — as well as placing the seat several inches more toward the center of the car. This will decrease the problem of head injuries from side impact such as those suffered by Bobby Allison in 1988 at Pocono as well as Steve Park’s career-slowing injury at Darlington.

All these developments underscore the need to keep working on the remaining problem of the sideways movement of the head. Here’s hoping those with the means and technical know-how are working on something a driver can use to eliminate it by direct means. Further, I hope sanctioning bodies don’t wait to embrace such technology until another tragedy occurs.

Meanwhile, I’m happy to report John Force, who has never worn a head restraint of any kind, has decided to start wearing one.

Jonathan Ingram can be reached at jingram666@cs.com.