Helmets for All

In 2002, U.S. college track star Kevin Dare attempted to pole-vault 15 feet 7 inches during a college track meet. He didn’t make the vault, instead he missed and was killed when he landed head first in the steel takeoff box that vaulters use to catapult themselves into the air.

Four years later, a standards panel approved the first standards for a pole vaulting helmet, and now, several are being produced.

In high income countries, sports participants, coaches, and parents are beginning to recognize that head injury during recreation can result in devastating morbidity and sometimes in death. Their response – to push for helmets to protect the head of sports participants.

But do we need helmets for all sports and for every occasion?

Injury experts are concerned that some of the new helmets are being designed without the empirical data that would result in an effective helmet. And although some argue that “any” protection is better than none when it comes to head injury, that’s not always the case. Poorly designed helmets could interfere with hearing and vision, and they may not be effective.

Although the increased use of bicycle and motorcycle helmets have resulted in documented decreases in head injuries, that hasn’t already been the case in other sports. Most headgear in other sports developed because of a tragedy and through campaigns of advocacy groups rather than a documented, statistically significant need. (See the following table showing data on head injuries and sports)

The helmet process starts when one of the standard groups – like the American Society for Testing and Materials in the United States of America – gets a request to develop standards for a helmet. The process is not always driven by a spike in the number of head injuries, but instead by one or two tragic events. And it is often driven by an advocacy group, or concerned parent, rather than a sports governing body.

That’s why there is a pole vaulting helmet, and – even though there are almost 25,000 head injuries associated with basketball playing, there are no helmets. Other sports like football, or soccer as Americans call it, are seeing an increase in head injuries (from about 10,000 in 1995 to 14,000 in 2004) and there is some interest in developing a helmet for soccer, and requiring youth players to wear them.

Unless scientists and engineers know a little about the dynamics of the injury – the speed, the kinds of surfaces struck, and so forth, it is difficult to design a helmet that will be effective.

— excerpted from Martin H. Today, helmets for all. LA Times, July 24, 2006.

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