Maxx CrawfordIn March of 2001, David Banks was living a carefree, adventurous life, until a day riding four-wheelers in the dunes of Arizona took a dramatic turn. Before he knew it, he was severely injured.
“Nasty accident. It happened so fast, I don’t even remember exactly what happened,” said Banks.
“I ended up damaging my knee in about three or four places. I shattered my femur. Ankle was destroyed, the whole leg was pretty much mangled.”
A few months and surgeries later, he found himself facing different challenges in the prime of his life, as an amputee.
The thought of never playing basketball again was something he couldn’t accept. Faced with the challenge of letting his injury define who he was, David pushed himself to overcome it. Fortunately, he had a little help from prosthetics engineer, Jay Martin.
“I started a research and development company – Martin Bionics – which really focused on trying to improve the state of technology in the prosthetics field,” said Martin. “Early on in my career I realized there was really an enormous gap between the state of the art prosthetics, at the time, and what God gave us originally. So there’s a lot of room for innovation.”
Thanks to Martin’s technology and the tools used to develop modern day prosthetics, David is active and back to playing the sport he loves.
Plastics play a large role in the development and comfort of a prosthetic limb. Made using components found in natural gas, plastics make every prosthetic a flexible, custom fit.
“We’ve integrated fabrics in to replace what used to be rigid. And those fabrics, are really petroleum-based materials,” said, Martin. “As this technology continues to gain exposure and is applied across the world, it changes people’s lives in a very practical way.”
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