- [Announcer] And in trouble is 07, LaJoie, Randy LaJoie slamming into the wall.

Randy LaJoie, (indistinct) - 1984, we went to Daytona.

I went for a pretty good ride.

That was my first of probably a handful of pretty good concussions.

(ambient music) See some of the helmets I have here.

The problem with some of these is because I have crashed and I have broken the helmets.

My dad was a racer, then it went to me, and now I'm doing it with my kids.

(ambient music) I tell people racing is dangerous.

(announcers shouting) It always will be.

They give you a helmet and a fire suit, it's because it's dangerous.

My eyes didn't start opening up until I went to three or four funerals and they're like, man, that kid was a good kid.

He's not here no more.

Dang, that kid's a good kid.

He ain't here no more.

Man, that guy was a legend, he's not here no more.

And then the more stuff I started doing with NASCAR and doing sled tests and you're like, oh my goodness, this is serious.

'Cause it's hard to explain to people what your body goes through, when you're 60% fluid.

we're containing jello, so we have to protect that jello.

And the less that jello moves, the better the occupant's gonna be.

(ambient music) (machines whirring) - We're a full custom shop, little bit of steel, but all our products basically are aluminum.

And a big part of the LaJoie seats is the roundness that you have in here that fits a body, because nobody's square, we're all rounded here and we're all a little different shape.

- We do all our own sizings.

You'll see different size seats being made.

(saw whirring) (tools clattering) You'll see on the wall hanging before we get 'em completed, kids stuff.

You'll see stuff from 120 pound person to a 280 pound person.

- I fit all the tubing and weld it in and then do the final check and make sure the dimensions are right for the paperwork that we have for the size of the person.

And I have seen some of the seats that I made in the past with people that were wrecked in 'em.

It's pretty interesting to me to see how the seats hold up in the wrecks.

That's the main crux of the situation is how do they function when you're actually wrecking in one?

'Cause nobody wants to wreck.

If everything is perfect, this thing never gets bent.

- As you can tell, got caught in a fire somehow, I guess the car caught on fire, headrest foam's burnt, the rest of the seat's burnt.

- But it'll end up looking good once we're done with it.

(upbeat music) - Because all the racing technology improves, cars get faster, they build frames differently and all that, we still have to kind of keep up with what everything's going.

The basic people aren't changing, but the applications that we're putting these people in and using these seats with changes.

If it doesn't feel right in the car, then half of what you're trying to get out of the seat is not working for you.

There's the safety factor.

But then there's a comfort factor too.

- If they hit something and the seat bends, I wanna know.

- [Announcer] Photo finish as cars spin.

- Because I don't want the next one to bend.

I want the report from the crash and this way the next person could be better.

Somebody gets hurt in one, I want to know why.

- This is one of our heavyweight seats.

This would be a cup seat.

- You gotta certify our seats every couple years.

NASCAR has had black boxes in these cars now for 25 years maybe.

The information that we get fed back for safety stuff goes into everything we do here.

So we adjust the strength of the tubing, the size of the tubing.

We're talking NASCAR style seats are good for a hundred G hit, which we have seen, to protect the driver.

- [Worker] If I don't do a good job at what I do, somebody may get hurt doing what they do, trying to have fun, trying to make a living.

(engines rumble) - We do a lot of things for people's children also.

We do a lot of little seats.

And you've really gotta take some pride in doing those because you're dealing with something that somebody's child is using.

That's a pretty good incentive to me.

- Everybody grows up racing with speed secrets.

You know what?

There should be no secrets in safety.

And that's what I've done, and we're learning every day.

I mean, safety is a moving target.

I think we've helped the industry be safer.

Before racers, we'd never thought about getting hurt.

It would happen to the other guy.

It would never happen to us, but it could.

(ambient music) (machine whirring)