Save Your Neck Program

The Save Your Neck program is designed to increase public awareness about neck and spinal injuries with the ultimate goal of preventing those injuries.

Tens of thousands of people each year receive permanent spinal injuries as a result of rear end crashes. Many of these are not externally visible injuries, but damage to critical nerves, joints, ligaments, and bones. Most of these life changing injuries can be prevented or minimized with proper seat design and public awareness.

Why Save Your Neck?

• Drivers in cars with head restraints rated good are 24 percent less likely to suffer neck injuries in rear-end crashes than drivers with head restraints rated poor. Percentages of drivers with neck injuries ranged from 22 percent of those with good head restraints to 27 percent of those with poor head restraints.

• Female drivers have higher neck injury rates overall than male drivers -- 30 percent versus 23 percent.

• Neck injury likelihood was 36 percent lower among female drivers with good head restraints than among females with poor restraints. Among male drivers, the risk reduction was 10 percent with good head restraints.

• Drivers 65 and older have lower neck injury rates overall than younger drivers -- 13 percent versus 27 percent among drivers 50 to 64 years old and 33 percent among drivers 49 and younger.

Want to see more research?  Click here for PubMed articles on whiplash and head restraints research since 1990

How can I participate in the Save Your Neck Day?

Save Your Neck is an inclusive event.  This means that we want volunteers from all walks of life.  Here are some examples of how you can participate:

• Medical Professionals:  Sponsor a Save Your Neck Day Event at your clinic!  Provide our press release kit to your local paper and have patients bring in friends and family for a Save Your Neck Car Check.  Market your event to insurers, attorneys, and primary care doctors.

• Insurers: Sponsor an event at your claim centers.  Provide a press release to the local media and then send announcements to all patients involved in a car accident and/or to all insureds.  Have your insureds come in for a Car Check.

• Attorneys: Sponsor an event at your office.  Provide a press release to the local media and send announcements to your clients.  Have your clients come in for a Car Check.  Show them that you care enough to Save their Necks.

• Patients:  Secure a local sponsor.  Hand out brochures at your work place or mall.  Set up a booth at a busy spot in your community and perform a Car Check

• Save your neck  demonstration news clip

Contact the Spinal Injury Foundation to enroll your sponsored site today!  For the United Kingdom email or phone Karen O'Donahue at 0117-904-5792.  The neck you save might be a loved ones. 

Informational Materials

• The 2007 Save Your Neck brochure-View the PDF file (draft).  Email this file to family and friends.  You only get one neck, save it!

• How to perform a Save Your Neck Car Check (draft)

• See how the neck joints spear themselves in a rear end collision.

• Check the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety Headrest Ratings:  In a rear end crash, all that stands between you and a permanent neck injury is the head  rest.  A   head rest that allows your head to move with the rest of your body is optimal.  How   does your head   rest compare?

• IIHS  Status Report on Head Restraints:  Everything you always wanted to know about head restraints but were afraid to ask...new active head restraint data shows up to a 49% decrease in neck injury claims

• Head-rest modifications from Wedge Support Products

• Questions and answers on neck injuries

International Contributors:

• Add On Headrest by Wedge Support Products, United States

• Thatcham, England

• BRAKE, England

• Lyons Davidson Law Firm, England

• Melbourne Whiplash Center, Australia