Anti-concussion collar draws inspiration from woodpeckers | Hacker News Reader

Anti-concussion collar draws inspiration from woodpeckers

bloomberg.com

78 pointstokenadult19 comments

People interested in how the NFL has been trying to ignore the concussion issue for decades should watch the Frontline program League of Denial. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/

It ties directly into the film Concussion. Will Smith stars as the Dr. who first noticed CTE in retired NFL football players. Smith is not quite the box office attraction that he used to be, but, nevertheless, the NFL is probably not too thrilled about the release of this movie.

This looks somewhat similar in idea to the HANS head and neck support device used in motorsport but a lot smaller. It was invented about a decade before its widespread, initially drivers thought it was clunky and restricting. It was adopted and officially mandated (in both, FIA and major American motorsports) after another preventable death from a basilar skull fracture caused by a rapid jerk on the head upon impact.

Some professional athletes sacrifice their health for the entertainment of others (in injuries as well as unheatlhy training regime and doping). I'm all for making sports safer but as the audience we should also align our expectations to reduce the demand for dangerous feats in sports and entertainment.

If you think about it, in principle, the best you could do is make a device that 1) controls the acceleration of the head assuming it will reach a certain displacement e.g. d=10cm with final velocity v=0 ) transfers the forces from the skull to elsewhere.

So the absolute best protection you could get would be some kind of cage around the head not linked to the head at all -- maybe you couple this cage directly to a vest akin the HANS device you mentioned, and actuate a separate mechanism smoothing the head movement, with the largest radius possible around the head to provide the least maximum acceleration ( a_maxmin = initial velocity^2 / 2 * d ). Normal head movement could be completely unhindered.

Now since this is a sport this could devolve into a bunch of people just bashing pieces of plastic into each other, which may or may not be desirable over the current situation; how much such a device would cost (not accessible to amateurs); and as others mentioned it's also possible their velocities will increase to compensate, maybe not changing the number of injuries at all.

I wish guys weren't trained to hit so hard. I've played contact sports, and most hits to sensitive areas can be lessened. I accidentally clipped(once I knew I made contact in the wrong area, I instinctively pulled back, but the hit still stung the guy). And maybe even that semi hard, cheap hit was Freudian. Never liked the dude.

When Joe Namath knees were inflamed Cantalopues; even the hardest hitting, most aggressive plyers would pick him up, and put him down. As a kid I knew guys were treating him differently. As an adult watching the replays--I knew what they were doing.

If you claim you don't have the ability to pick and choose--get out of the sport. I've met some uncoordinated clods who shouldn't be playing contact sports.

I can't help but be reminded of the "Neckbelt Recall" clip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiuOQHTsNg

The engineers will have to fight Murphy tooth and nail to make this safe.

Will this not lead to even harder hits, just like the advent of helmets did?

Solution: light-up accelerometer helmets, and a new rule that if the helmet lights up it's a penalty (one designed so as to disinentivize both teams).

Football coaches and teams will very quickly determine the best way to tackle without rapid skull acceleration.

> Solution: light-up accelerometer helmets, and a new rule that if the helmet lights up it's a penalty

I like this idea.

Many motorsports (such as Formula 1) have safety accelerometers that require medical checkup to the driver when tripped (I think around 25-50 G impacts). It also alerts the track officials to take special care if the driver has to be extricated from the vehicle. There have been incidents in the past when a driver has walked away from the crash, but later developed a headache and died in the following days.

How do you disincentivize both teams in a zero-sum game?

Money seems like the simplest solution.

It's not a zero sum game, the football leagues are businesses engaged in maximizing revenue while minimizing liabilities. Injured players are a liability.

In American football at all levels there are already severe disincentives for dangerous hits such as helmet-to-helmet collisions; these usually start at a 15 yard penalty and escalate to ejections and suspensions.

You can't give both teams a 15 yard penalty. How do you set up a rule so you don't incentivize teams to 'draw the foul'?

One question to ask is, given the history of the existing 'unnecessary roughness' / 'illegal hit' rules (which have been around for decades), why haven't teams been incentivized to 'draw the foul' already? (in the nfl, faking an injury at critical times is already disincentivized, see http://static.nfl.com/static/content/public/image/rulebook/p... section 5 article 4 page 18)

Also given how much time is spent going over videos of games after the fact (at all levels from high school on up), someone trying to draw the foul stands a pretty good chance at being caught out at it, which opens them up to, say, getting a multi-game suspension.

I think that's a great idea - I wouldn't try to link it to rule changes, but having players instrumented so you know that there might be a problem so they can stop playing and maybe get a checkup is a great idea.

Build something like into a rugby scrum cap and I'd buy one for my teenage son in an instant.

Interesting parallel to occlusion training/KAATSU, which restricts veins during weight lifting and physical therapy.

> A standard test in brain damage research involves dropping brass weights on the heads of anesthetized rats, then inspecting their brains for tearing in the connections between nerve cells.

Yeah, not nice.

> He recruited about 60 high school football players, gave half of them collars, and measured changes in their brains over the course of a season.

Incidentally, that will likely be evidence of child abuse.

Why? Because one group got protection but not the other?

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