Helmet Wars

STltAINED BRAINS
Most helmets do a
good Job preve nting
skull fractures but do
not directly address
concussions.
ATHLETES IN THE U.S. SUFFER
3.8 MILLION SPORTS-RELATED
CONCUSSIONS EACH YEAR.
WHILE HELMET MAKERS DITHER
WITH SMALL IMPROVEMENTS,
SWEDISH SCIENTISTS HAVE
BUILT SOMETHING THAT
COULD PROTECT US ALL
-
STORY BY
TOM FOSTER
PHOTOGRAPHS BY
TRAVIS RATHBONE
On August 19, 2012, in week two of
the NFL preseason, Indianapolis Colts
wide receiver Austin Collie ran 17
yards out from the line of scrimmage,
cut right toward the center of the field,
caught a pass, and was immediately
tackled by Pittsburgh Steelers corner­
back Ike Taylor. As Taylor came in for
the hit, his helmet appeared to glance
off the left side of Collie's helmet.
Then the cornerback wrapped his arm
around Collie's neck and jerked the
receiver's head to the right. An instant
later, Steelers linebacker Larry Foote
came barreling in from the opposite
side and slammed his elbow into the
right side of Collie's helmet. As the
receiver fell to the ground, his helmet
first hit Foote's knee and then struck
the ground face-first.
JANUARY 2013 •
POPULAR SCIEN CE
51
Collie sat up, dazed, and had to be helped off
the field a minute later. He didn't return to play
for three weeks. The diagnosis: concussion. It
wasn't the first time Collie had suffered what's
clinically called a traumatic brain injury. On
November 7, 2010, he spent nearly 10 minutes
lying motionless on the 34-yard line after being
hit in the head almost simultaneously by two
Philadelphia Eagles players. Medics carried
him off the field on a stretcher. In his first game
back, two weeks later, he left in the first quarter
with another concussion. He missed three more
games, only to suffer yet another concussion on
December 19, which ended his season.
Professional football players receive as many
as 1,500 hits to the head in a single season,
depending on their position. That's 15,000 in a
IO-year playing career, not to mention any blows
they received in college, high school, and peewee
football. And those hits have consequences:
concussions and, according to recent research,
permanent brain damage. It's not just football,
either. Hockey, lacrosse, and even sports like
cycling and snowboarding are contributing to
a growing epidemic of traumatic brain injuries.
The CDC estimates that as many as 3.8 million
sports-related concussions occur in the U.S. each
year. That number includes not only profession­
als but amateurs of all levels, including children.
Perhaps most troubling, the number isn't going down.
In the past two years, the outrage surrounding sports-related
concussions has mounted. In January 2011, Senator Tom Udall
(D-NM) called for a Federal Trade Commission investigation of the
football helmet industry for "misleading safety claims and decep­
tive practices," which the agency is currently pursuing. In June
2012, more than 2,000 former NFL players filed a class-action suit
against the league as well as Riddell, the largest football-helmet
manufacturer and an official NFL partner, accusing them of obfus­
cating the science of brain trauma. The litigation could drag on for
years and cost billions of dollars.
The real issue is that lives are at stake. In 2006, this fact became
tragically clear when former Philadelphia Eagles star Andre
Waters committed suicide by shooting himself. Subsequent studies
of his brain indicated that he suffered from chronic traumatic
encephalopathy (CTE), a form of brain damage that results in
dementia and is caused by repeated blows to the head. A sicken­
ing drumbeat of NFL suicides has followed, including former stars
Dave Duerson, Ray Easterling, and Junior Seau, who by one esti­
mate suffered as many as 1,500 concussions in his career.
For equipment manufacturers, the demand for protective
headgear has never been greater. Leading companies, as well as
an army of upstarts, have responded by developing a number
of new helmet designs, each claiming to offer unprecedented
safety. The trouble is that behind them all lie reams of conflicting
research, much of it paid for, either directly or indirectly, by the
helmet manufacturers or the league.
For players or coaches or the concerned parents of young
52
POPULAR SCIEN CE .
JANUARY 2013
PROFESSIONAL FOOTBALL PLAYERS RECEIVE AS MANY AS 1,500 HITS TO eras
THE HEAD IN A SINGLE SEASON. THAT'S 15,000 IN A 10-YEAR PLAYING CAREER. W
L>
athletes, it's hard to know whom to believe. And despite all the
research and development, and the public outcry, the injuries just
keep coming. What makes the situation even more tragic is that
a helmet technology already exists that could turn the concussion
epidemic around.
<
>
THE TROUBLE WITH CONCUSSIONS
o understand why current helmets aren't better at
reducing concussions, consider the nature of the
injury. A concussion is essentially invisible. Even
the most advanced medical-imaging tech~ology isn't
sensitive enough to show the physical manifestations,
the damaged brain tissue. Diagnosis, then, is based entirely on
symptoms and circumstances. Is the patient dizzy or confused, or
was he briefly unconscious? Does he have a headache or nausea?
Does he remember what happened, and did it look like he got hit
in the head really hard?
Even if doctors could reliably diagnose concussions, identifying
the injury does little to protect against it; for that, scientists need an
T
concussions.
THE FAL.I..EN Junior Seau's suicide in 2012
heightened the controversy around head trauma
in athletes. Colts receiver Austin Collie [abovel
received three game-ending concussions in
2010 before he was benched for the season.
accurate picture of what's happening inside the head.
For generations, doctors believed that concussions
were a sort of bruising of the brain's gray matter at
the site of impact and on the opposite side, where the
brain presumably bounced off the skull. The reality
is not nearly that simple: Concussions happen deep
in the brain's white matter when forces transmitted
from a big blow strain nerve cells and their connec­
tions, the axons.
To understand how that happens, it's important
to recognize that different types of forces-linear
and rotational acceleration-act on the brain in any
physical trauma. Linear acceleration is exactly what
it sounds like, a straight-line force that begins at the
point of impact. It causes skull fracture, which makes
perfect sense: You hit the bone hard enough, it breaks.
Rotational acceleration is less intuitive. It occurs
most acutely during angular impacts, or those in
which force is not directed at the brain's center of
gravity. You don't have to know much about football
or hockey to realize that rotation is a factor in a whole
lot of hits. "Think about it," says Robert Cantu, a
neurosurgeon at Boston University School of Medi­
cine and the author of 29 books on neurology and
sports medicine. "Because most hits are off-center
and because our heads are not square, most of the
accelerations in the head are going to be rotational."
Further complicating matters, the human brain is
basically an irregularly shaped blob of Jell-O sitting
Crash Course The helmet market is booming. What sets tile new products apart?
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RIDDEll 360
XENITH X2
SCHUTIION 40
The official NFL helmet
partner since 1989,
Riddell launched the
360 in 2011. It has extra
padding around the front
and sides of the head,
and the company's
signature Concussion
Reducing Technology,
which adds even more
padding. Yet for all that
foam, most experts say
it does little to address
rotational forces, the
primary cause of
concussions.
Made by the nine-year-{)Id
helmet company Xenith,
the X2 replaces foam
padding with an array of
air-filled cylinders that
compress upon impact
by releasing air through
tiny holes. The harder
the hit, the stiffer the
response. Such adaptive
cushioning can protect
against both lower-level
and higher-level forces
but still does little to
address rotation.
Made with thermoplastic
urethane cushioning that
performs consistently
even in extreme weather,
the Ion 4D, Schutt says,
"is designed with the
intent to reduce the risk
of concussions." Yet the
specs don't mention
rotational force, and a
2011 promotional video
dismisses the idea that
frequent lesser impacts
are as dangerous as the
rare violent one, calling it
"unproven."
RAWLINGS
QUANTUM PLUS
Better known for its
baseball helmets,
Rawlings introduced a
line of football helmets
a few years ago that,
like Riddell's, relies on
what's called large-{)ffset
design-in other words,
increased distance
between the head and
the shell in order to make
more room for extra
padding.
SGH HELMET
GUARDIAN CAP
This startup from the
self-proclaimed Godfather
of Safety, motorsportsequipment legend Bill
Simpson, says it makes
the lightest helmet on the
market. Its shell includes
Kevlar and carbon fiber;
its padding consists
of a single layer of a
proprietary composite
whose makeup Simpson
won't divulge until it is
patented.
Developed by Atlanta
engineer Lee Hanson,
the Guardian Cap is a
padded sock worn over a
standard helmet. Critics
say the Guardian could
get caught during impact,
causing neck injuries and
exacerbating rotation.
Hanson says the sock
would just slip off. As
for the obvious aesthetic
issues, he says the
Guardian is meant only
for practice, not games.
--)
JANUARY 2013 •
POPULAR SCIE NCE
53
]
SHOCK TREATMENT
Stefan Duma, a biomedical
engineer at Virginia Tech,
studies the forces exerted
on a helmet during a
vertical.{irop test IleftJ.
The test is the basis for
the NOCSAE football
helmet safety certification.
Duma also tests helmet
performance during
horizontal impacts laboveJ .
inside a hard shell lined with ridges and cliffs. After a football
tackle or a hockey check, that blob moves, and does so in irregu­
Jar ways. "Rotational forces strain nerve cells and axons more
than linear forces do," Cantu says . "They're not only stretching,
but they're twisting at the same time. So they have a potential for
causing greater nerve injury."
So what's the problem? If scientists know that a concussion is
nerve strain caused largely by rotation of the brain, why can't they
figure out a way to stop the rotation?
Just as the actual injury isn't visible to medical imaging tech­
nology, the rotation that causes the injury isn't measurable in
impact conditions; scientists cannot be inside an athlete's brain
measuring its movement. But in a grisly 2007 study, researchers
at Wayne State University in Detroit used a high-speed x-ray to
observe the brains of human cadaver heads fitted with football
helmets and struck from various angles. The research, corrobo­
rated by computer models, showed that the brains moved very
little-just millimeters. Yet those small movements are enough to
cause nerve strain and affect neurological function.
Making things even more difficult is that every brain is differ­
ent. Young brains respond differently than older brains, female
brains differently than male. Researchers have also found that
weaker, subconcussive hits can have a cumulative effect over time
and lead to CTE, which is likely the cause of many former-player
suicides. But how many hits it takes, and what kind, is unclear­
and the condition can' t be diagnosed while the player is alive.
Only when his brain is cut open can researchers spot the dead
zones in the tissue.
The scientific ambiguity surrounding concussions clearly
54
POPUL AR SCIENCE .
JANUARY 2013
impedes the development of better helmets. But there's another
reason helmet technology hasn't improved, one more troubling
than gaps in our knowledge: a self-regulated industry governed by
badly outdated safety standards.
40 - YEAR - OLD STANDARDS
icture the head of a typical crash-test dummy, the kind
you see in car commercials. It's attached to a rigid metal
arm that hangs above a cylindrical anvil topped with
a hard plastic disc, A lab technician straps a football
helmet to the headform, cranks the arm' up to precisely
five feet above the anvil, and lets it drop-crack. Inside the dummy
head, an accelerometer positioned at the center of gravity records
the linear acceleration transmitted during impact. This brutish trial
is called a vertical drop test, and it's the basis for how all football
helmets are certified safe by the National Operating Committee
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on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), an association
funded by equipment manufacturers, which in turn funds much
of the research on sports-related head trauma. The standard has
remained largely unchanged since its creation in 1973.
Now think back to Austin Collie 's concussion in August 2012­
the jerking of the head after the initial hit, the collisions with Larry
Foote's elbow and the ground. Those impacts don't look much
like the straight-line force of the NOCSAE drop test. And that
brings up a very important question, perhaps the central question
scientists and helmet makers are trying to solve today: Is the linear
acceleration measured by a drop test correlated to rotational
acceleration , and if so, by how much?
Untold lives and billions of dollars in sales, medical fees, and
litigation costs could depend on a clear answer. If the relation­
ship between the forces is strong, the key to reducing rotational
acceleration is the same as reducing linear acceleration: Add more
padding. Clearly helmet manufactures would prefer such a simple
solution. If the connection is weak, however-or at least weak in
the most dangerous hits-more padding will do little to reduce
concussions, and companies will need to rethink current designs
entirely, a very costly endeavor.
In 2003, a New Hampshire-based company named Simbex
introduced a research tool calJed the Head Impact Telemetry
System (HITS). Among other things, it seemed to have the poten­
tial to answer the question of correlation. HITS is an array of six
spring-loaded accelerometers positioned inside a helmet to record
JANUARY 2013 • POPUI.AR SCI ENCE
55
HELMET WARS
the location and severity of significant impacts. After
any hit over a certain threshold , the system beams the
data to a companion device on the sidelines. Coaches
can monitor players in real time, and researchers get
reams of real-world data to dig through. Stefan Duma,
the founding director of Virginia Tech's Center for
Injury Biomechanics, is among those working with
HITS data; at his urging, every player on the univer·
sity's football team wears a HITS-equipped helmet.
After analyzing data from two million impacts, Duma
says there is a clear and strong connection between
linear and rotational forces.
Unfortunately, other researchers say it's not that
simple. The correlation is high if you look at all hits,
they say, but it taUs apart when you look at highly
angular ones-the hits that carry a greater risk of
concussion. "Take an extreme example," says Boston
University's Cantu. "If you impact the tip of the face
mask, if you have another player coming at it side·
ways, you're going to spin the head on the neck and
have very low linear acceleration and very high rota·
tional acceleration."
Indeed, for every advocate of the HITS data, there
exists an equaJJy vocal critic. They say that helmets
deform under the force of a 250-pound linebacker,
skewing data. They say the HITS algorithm that
calculates rotation is flawed. They point out that the
founder of HITS is a co·author on all the published
studies that validate the system. Blaine Hoshizaki, a
biomechanics professor at the University of Ottawa
whose research focuses on angular hits, sounds
exasperated when I ask him about Duma's find­
ings. "You've got to look at the events that are really
contributing to concussion," he says. "It may be that
in 1,000 hits , only 50 are highly non-centric, but
maybe those 50 are the most dangerous-and that's
what our data shows."
In essence, the system created to answer questions about
concussions has raised a lot more questions. The resulting confu­
sion sets off a cascade of effects. Unclear science makes for
unclear standards, and unclear standards leave a lot of room for
interpretation. The impact on the helmet industry is conspicuous:
It's become a free·for·all.
IMPACT TRACKER
II
Coaches and medics can
use the Head Impact
Telemetry System (HITS)
10 monitor the force and
location of certain tackles
from the sidelines.
"IF SOMETHING IS AVAILABLE THAT
MAKES YOUR HELMET MORE
SAFE, YOU SHOULD BE HELD LIABLE
FOR NOT USING IT."
THE HELMET ARMS RACE
n December 2010, a longtime auto-racing safety equipment
maker named Bill Simpson happened to attend one of the
Colts games in which medics helped Austin Collie off the
field after a concussion. Following the incident, Simpson
asked the Colts' offensive coordinator, a friend, what had
happened to his receiver.
"Oh, that's just part of the game," the coach said .
Simpson saw an opportunity. In auto racing, he 's known as the
Godfather of Safety, and once set himself on fire to demonstrate
the efficacy of one of his racing suits. He figured he could make a
better football helmet, so he got to work in his Indianapolis ware­
house. By 2011, several pros, including CoUie, were wearing early
I
56
I.
POPULAR SCIENCE •
JANUARY 2013
experimental versions of Simpson's helmet.
That an individual inventor could develop, produce, and deliver
a product into the hands of professional athletes speaks to the
upheaval in the world of helmet manufacturing. What was once a
rather staid industry dominated by a few large companies has now
grown to include an increasing number of upstart firms, seriai
entrepreneurs, and individual inventors. The result has been ~
proliferation of new designs. Mainstream helmet makers hav
stuck with variations on previous models: polycarbonate shell!
filled with various densities and thicknesses of padding. Newcom
ers have developed more creative, albeit less rigorously tested
approaches. Perhaps the best-known is the bizarre·looking Guard
ian Cap, a padded sock that slips over a typical helmet. Anothe:
approach that received a lot of attention in 2011, the Bulwark,
came from the workbench of an aerospace engineer and self­
professed "helmet geek" in North Carolina; it had a modular shell
that could be configured to match the demands of different play­
ers. It never made it out of prototype stage.
For his part, Simpson officially launched his SGH helmet
in October 2012 to immediate fanfare. Sports Illustrated "injury
expert" columnist Will Carroll tugged one on and had someone
whack him over the crown of the head-a strong, almost purely
i deliver
linear force. He reported not feeling much at all. His conclusion:
s to the
This helmet must work.
s once a
When I called Simpson to discuss the helmet and ask how it
has noW
reduces the forces responsible for concussion, he mentioned that
IS, serial
none of the neuroscientists he's spoken with have been able to tell
s been a him what forces actually cause a concussion. "How do you know
ers have you're stopping the right forces, then?" I asked him. "If you don't
lie shells know what's causing a concussion, how can you prevent it?"
Newcom­
"You're asking me a lot of questions that are pretty off the
ly tested, wall, my friend ," he said . "A lot of questions I can' t answer." He
19 Guard­ explained that his helmet uses a composite shell made of carbon
. Another fiber and Kevlar, plus an inner layer of adaptive foam made of
Styrofoam-like beads. It performs better in a NOCSAE-style drop
test than anything else on the market, he said.
"Does it specifically address rotational acceleration?" J asked.
He laughed. "No helmet does thaL"
J tried a more direct approach: "Can you make claims about
concussion reduction with your helmet?"
"Oh, hell no," he said, "I would never make a claim about thaI."
The NFL, at least since Congress took an interest, has gotten
serious about sorting out who is claiming what-or not. "There is
not a week that passes that J don't see a new device," says Kevin
Guskiewicz, a University of North Carolina sports medicine
researcher and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient who also chairs
the FL's Subcommittee on Safety Equipment and Playing Rules.
"There's a binder weighing down the corner of my desk. J don't
think you're going to see the NFL flat-{)ut endorsing a product, but
they certainly feel that they' re responsible for trying to help prevent
these injuries. So we're going to be reviewing these technologies in
order to say, here are three or four that need to be studied further."
The boldest claim from mainstream helmet makers comes,
perhaps not surprisingly, from Riddell. The company's newest
helmet, the 360, builds on a system called Concussion Reducing
JANUARY 2013 •
POPULAR SCIENCE
57
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NFL players Daryl Johnston
and Dave Duerson [above]
in 2007 at a Senate hearing
on disability benefits for
retired athletes. Duerson [left]
committed suicide in 2011 by
shooting himself in the chest.
He left a note asking that his
intact brain be donated to
the Boston University School
of Medicine for research.
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THE NFL, AT LEAST SINCE CONGRESS TOOK AN INTEREST, HAS GOrrEN
SERIOUS ABOUT SORTING OUT WHO IS CLAIMING WHAT-OR NOT.
w
Technology (CRT), which it first launched in 2002. According
to a highly adrenalized promotional video, which has since been
removed from the Riddell website, engineers designed CRT in
response to an NFL-funded study by a Canadian research lab
called Biokinetics. Researchers looked at film from actual NFL
hits that resulted in concussions and attempted to map their loca­
tion, distance, and speed. The two main findings: that rotational
acceleration is a major factor in concussions, and that players get
hit a lot on the side of the head.
In response to the study, the designers developing CRT added
energy-attenuating material (extra padding) to side- and fro nt­
impact areas. They also increased the overall dimensions of
CRT-equipped helmets by a few millimeters to allow for still more
padding. The designers of the 360 built on the CRT but went a
step further, adding an even greater amount of padding to the
impact areas. It wasn't clear to me how those changes addressed
rotation-the single greatest factor in the concussions that CRT
and the 360 helmet meant to reduce. So I asked Riddell's head
of research and development, Thad Ide. "Well, in many cases the
linear acceleration and the rotation that linear imparts go hand in
hand," he said, echoing Duma's HITS findings at Virginia Tech.
"Reducing linear forces will reduce the rotational forces."
So the question remains: If addressing linear force is the key, and
better padding is the way to do that, then why hasn't the number
58
POPUL AR SCIE NCE .
JANUARY 2013
...z
of concussions decreased? "You haven't seen it change because
[the helmet makers] haven't addressed it," says the University of
Ottawa's Hoshizaki.
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A NEW HOPE
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na small room off the basement garage of a building on
the outskirts of Stockholm, an entirely different kind of
helmet test is taking place. Peter Halldin, a biomechanical
engineer at the Royal Institute of Technology, is strapping
a helmet onto a dummy head affixed to a custom drop-test
rig. Rather than slamming a helmet into a stationary anvil, as in
the NOCSAE test, Halldin's rig drops it onto a pneumatic sled
that moves horizontally. By calibrating the angle of the helmet,
the height of the drop, and the speed of the sled, Halldin says
he can more accurately re-create the angular forces that result in
rotational acceleration than other labs can. Within the dummy
head, nine accelerometers measure the linear force transmitted
during impact; a computer nearby calculates rotational accelera­
tion from that data.
Today Halldin is testing two ski helmets that are identi­
cal except for one thing: Inside one, a bright yellow layer of
molded plastic attached with small rubber straps sits between
the padding and the head. This is the Multidirectional Impact
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Protection System (MIPS), which is also
the name of a company he co-founded.
Halldin spends about half of his time as
eTO of MIPS and the other as a faculty
member of the Royal Institute.
The idea behind MIPS is simple: The
plastic layer sits snugly on a player's head
beneath the padding. By allowing the head
to float during an impact, MIPS can elimi­
nate some of the rotational force before it
makes its way to the brain.
First up in Halldin's test is the non­
MIPS helmet. Halldin flips on a high-speed
camera and steps back from the impactor,
DEAD ZONES Dark
ready to catch the helmet on its rebound.
spots in the brain of a
"Five, four, three, two, one ... " There's a
fanner football player
loud clattering as the slcd shoots forward
correspond to the
at 22 feet per second and the helmet drops
buildup of tau protein.
to meet it at 12 feet per second-crack.
I can see on the computer that the head
sustained about 170 Gs of linear force,
and it rotated 14,100 radians per second
squared (the standard scientific metric
THE DISEASE
WHAT CAUSES m
For decades, the term "punch-<Jrunk" has
At Its most baSIC, CTE IS a cumulative
for rotation). It's a big hit, one that would
effect from repetitive head trauma-not just
been used to deSCribe boxers left permanently
probably result in a concussion or worse.
loopy after a career of hghfing. The cli nical
concussive blows but also weaker ones.
Now comes the second helmet. Every
name for the condition IS chronic traumatic
Impacts damage the brain's neural pathways,
variable is the same as in the first test
encephalopathy (CTE), and it can happen
and as a result a protein called tau builds up.
except for the addition of the low·fric­
to any athlete who suffers hequent blows to
The more tau along the pathways, the less
tion MIPS layer. "Five, four, three, two,
the head. CTE has no kn own treatment, and
eaSily brain signals can move around, which
doctors can only diagnose it postmortem, by
can lead to memory loss, lack of impulse
one... "-crack. This lime the wmputer
physically examining the brain for symptoms.
control, aggression, and depression.
shows rotation of 6,400 radians per
second squared, a 55 percent reduction.
Halldin starts in on a detailed explana­
HOW COM ON IS IT1
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR HELMETS?
tion of the effects of multiple impact tests
Scientists at the Center for the Study
Because footba ll helmet safety standards
on the performance of a helmet over time,
of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Bos\on
were designed to prevent skull fracture,
but I interrupt: "How would you charac­
University examine the brains of dead contact­
padding has to be stiff enough to weather an
terize that test result?" sports athletes. In its hrst year of operation, 17
extremely hard hit. But stiff cushioning allows
of the 18 brains researchers tested had CTE.
a lot of force to reach the head. Over time,
He looks at the colorful graphs on the Also, a team of scientists recently reported that
lIlat can lead to CTE. Certain companies,
computer screen again. If the test dummy
former NFL players are three times more likely
such as Xenith, have begun to use adaptive
werc a football player, he would have just
than the general population to die from brain
cushioning. It stays stiff during a big impact,
walked away from a game-ending impact
diseases such as Alzheimer's.
but softens during a smaller one.
without a concussion. Halldin smiles just a
bit, and permits himself a very un-Swedish
boast. "I would say that's f--king amazing."
Halldin is careful not to claim the MIPS system can crcate those kinds of results in
a11 impacts in a11 helmets. But, he says, "we can reduce rotation in
Rotational forecs quickly became their focus, and eventually they
aJ1 directions, and it's significant in most directions. We might get
came up with the idea for MIPS. Thc first product was a complete
35 percent in one direction, 25 percent in another direction, and
helmet, designed for the equestrian market. Although the helmet
was well received, the team quickly learned that a smart conccpt
15 percent in another. And hopefully the 15 percent is not in the
in the lab doesn't easily translate into a successful product launch.
most COI'l1mon impact direction for that sport."
MIPS is not new: The company's roots go back to 1997, when
Production problems and quality-control issues led the team to
Hans von Holst, a neurosurgeon at Stockholm's Karolinska
rethink thcir strategy and hire a new CEO, an experienced Swed­
Hospital (the same hospital that adjudicates the Nobel Prize for
ish executive named Niklas Steenberg. Steenberg took a look at
medicine), got tired of seeing patients come in with brain injuries
the situation and decided that, like airbags in cars or Intel chips in
from hockey and other sports, and decided to do something about
laptops, MIPS was not an end-market product. Instead they would
it. He joined up with Ha11din at the Royal Institute, and together
focus on licensing it to existing helmet companies so those manu­
they spent the nexl )0 years studying trmlmatic brain injuries.
facturers could improve their own products.
What's Behind
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PO PULAR SCIEN[E
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HELMET WARS
(0 TINUfO fR OM PAGE 59
Since then, MIPS has licensed its
sliding low-friction layer to about 20
helmet manufacturers, for sports from
snowboarding and skiing to cycling and
motocross. Recently, Steen berg decided ,
the COrnpilnY was ready to start hunting
the big game-first American ho ckey and
then the biggest of all, footballi.
FOLLOW THE MONE Y
One would think the Riddell s of the world
PO Box 19818·5112 Graneros Rd.
Colorado City, CO 81019
www.plasmacam.com
(719) 676-2700 • fax (719) 676-2710
would fall all over themselves to license
or create something like MIPS, a simple
product that directly addresses a critical
factor in concussions and incorporates
easily into existing helmet designs.
"I thought we'd have people hugging
us, saying, 'Thank you!' " says Ken Yaffe, a
former NHL executive who left the league
in March 2012, after 19 years, and signed
on with MIPS to help them get an audi­
ence with U.S. manufacturers. But after
nearly a year of squiring Steenberg and
Halldin around to different companies, he
says, "we've been met with skepticism."
One of the rea sons, Yaffe suspects, is
that current safety standards don't require
the companies to do anything more than
what they're already doing. It's a criti­
cism privately echoed by most helmet
researchers: Simplistic certification stan­
dards provide convenient legal cover for
the manufacturers. If NOCSAE certifies
a company's helmets as safe, then the
company has less risk of being held respon­
sible for injuries. On the other hand, if that
same company goes above and beyond
the standards, it could put itself at risk of
getting sued: Suddenly all of its existing
helmets would appear to be inadequate,
and worse, the company might have to
admit knowing that they fell short.
Duma, of Virginia Tech, points to
NOCSAE's industry funding to explain
how such a situation has persisted in
football. "Follow the money," he says.
" Imagine if Ford were the only organiza­
tion testing its cars, and it was saying that
everyone got the top rating. It's a very
unusual arrangement."
To Steenberg, the MIPS CEO, the situ­
ation is both harmful and backward. "If
something is available that makes your
helmet more safe, you should be held liable
for not using it," he says. It's not the first
time a new safety technology has faced
such a paradox. All too often implementa­
tion hangs on the grim calculus of whether
the cost to industry of adopting a safety
measure is more or less than the cost to
the public of going without it. When liabil­
ity enters the equation, lawyers and judges
and lawmakers get involved, and even the
most urgent matters can end up mired in
argument. For example, it took more than
a decade to legislate seat belts as standard
equipment in automobiles. It's worth noting
that the two companies that first popular­
ized and implemented seat-belt standards
76
POPUL AR SCIE I CE •
JANUARY 2013
Cetl
contI
from
•
ISSUE
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~ SEARC
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HELMET WARS
Cetmore
content
from this
issuewith
13n
mi
were Saab and Volvo, both Swedish.
Change is on the horizon, though. The
University of Ottawa's Hoshizaki has a
grant from NOCSAE to develop a new
standard that incorporates rotation. "I
want to be fair to the manufacturers," he
says . "If they could make a safer helmet,
they would. I don't think they are against
it; they' re just making sure they don't
cross that line and say, 'Yea h, we should
be managing rotation,' because that would
bring up liability issues." With a new stan­
dard, that roadblock could vanish.
One enterprising company has already
launched a product to directly address
rotational acceleration in another contact
sport. In the summer of 2012, Bauer, the
number-one helmet maker in ice hockey,
released the Re-akt. Inside the helmet, a
thin, bright-yellow layer of material sits
loosely between the head and the padding,
allowing the head to move a little bit in
any direction during an impact.
Called Suspend-Tech, the layer appears,
to the color, suspiciously sim ilar to MIPS.
In fact, during the development of the
Re-akt, MIPS co-founder Halldin tested an
early version on his impact rig at the Royal
Institute. The stories diverge as to how that
collaboration came about, and how Bauer
came up with the idea for a sliding layer,
but any questions that arise about intel­
lectual property may not matter. Bauer's
Suspend-Tech is a significant debut: It is
the first attempt by a mainstream company
to include a rotational layer in contact­
sports helmets. MIPS is betting that since
one hockey manufacturer has embraced
the idea, the rest of the field will start shop­
ping for their own version. And that, in
turn, could create enough momentum for
MIPS to break into the football market.
In perhaps the most hopeful sign of
all, the NFL acknowledges that MIPS-li ke
products have the organization's atten­
tion. Kevin Guskiewicz of the NFL's safety
equipment subcommittee says the league
is already evaluating the concept. "We're
looking at it very seriously," he says.
Meanwhile, as scientists do mo re tests
and manufacturers bicker, 4.2 million
people will suit up and play football this
year, most of them child ren with still­
developing brains. Everyone of them
needs a good helmet.
ing
lar­
.rds
Tom Foster is based in Brooklyn, New York. This is his first story for POPULAR SClENCE. DOWNLOAD
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POPULAR SCIENCE 77
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