ChristopherN wrote: ↑11 Mar 2022, 12:50pm
Players' arms and legs would be more protected without helmets. The collisions would be delivered with less force, which would protect unprotected areas of a footballer's anatomy much better. The final advantage of removing helmets is related to the aesthetic of the game rather than its safety. But for heads safety, which is very important during the match, wearing a helmet is essential, even though you're right and it doesn't protect you from injuries. For example, at the last Football College match, I have watched a player get a concussion, even though he was wearing a helmet.
I'm sure there's a similar analogy about boxing, insofar as the rate of death/debilitating injury from boxing rose after the introduction of gloves. People could hit harder without pain than in bare-knuckle situations.
I was thinking about the discussion as a whole. I get the angle that "helmets don't eliminate concussions" because it'd be a huge statement to say that they do - the lawsuits as a result would be monumental for the few that did sustain concussions whilst wearing helmets. Ergo, the helmets were not
designed to eliminate concussions.
It could, however, be said (I guess) that there is a byproduct of helmet wearing that is reduction in the number of instances of concussion. Reading one of the above analogies that more concussions were sustained in their rugby career than during several high-velocity crashes, I wondered why this might be the case (having sustained concussions in rugby myself).
My assumption is that it is not necessarily the magnitude of the force at which someone is hit that causes concussion (brain hitting skull inner walls) but the velocity of their head, post-collision. If we think about a force striking an unprotected head, versus a force striking a 'helmeted' head, the design of said helmet is to absorb/redistribute said force reaching the users skull.
From a physics perspective, we consider force = mass x acceleration. If the effective force reaching the skull is reduced, the acceleration is reduced (as mass would be constant). If acceleration is reduced, the resulting velocity would therefore be reduced.
If that velocity is reduced, looking back at my above mention of brains hitting walls of our skulls equaling concussion, then isn't the
likelihood of concussion reduced?
Edit: apologies if I've repeated anyone's points, I'm skim-reading mostly.