Studies for Competing Design Called Into Question
Rebecca D'Angelo for The New York Times
Vin Ferrara, a former Harvard quarterback and the founder of Xenith LLC, with a helmet that will cost about $350.
Posted on 10/27/2007 7:50:25 PM PDT by neverdem
Vin Ferrara, a former Harvard quarterback, was looking for an aspirin in his medicine cabinet when his eyes fixed upon a ribbed plastic bottle used to squirt saline into sinuses. Ferrara squeezed the bottle, then pounded on it — finding that it cushioned soft and hard blows with equal aplomb, almost intelligence.
“This is it,” Ferrara declared. Three years later, Ferrara’s squirt bottle has led to a promising new technology to protect football players from concussions.
Football helmets have evolved over more than a century from crude leather bonnets to face-masked, polycarbonate battering rams. But they still often fail to protect brains from the sudden forces that cause concussions. Studies have found that 10 to 50 percent of high school players each season sustain concussions, whose effects can range from persistent memory problems and depression to coma and death.
Contemporary helmet manufacturers have made a point of improving protection against concussions. But experts suspect that Ferrara, who sustained several concussions as a player himself, has developed a radically effective design.
Rather than being lined with rows of traditional foam or urethane, Ferrara’s helmet features 18 black, thermoplastic shock absorbers filled with air that — not unlike his squirt bottle — can accept a wide range of forces and still moderate the sudden jarring of the head that causes concussion. Moreover, laboratory tests have shown that the disks can withstand hundreds of impacts without any notable degradation in performance, a longtime drawback of helmets’ traditional foam.
Dr. Robert Cantu of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the nation’s leading experts in concussion management, called it “the greatest advance in helmet design in at least 30 years.”
Cantu informally advised Ferrara during the helmet’s development but has no financial relationship with the product.
Dr. Gerry Gioia, a pediatric neuropsychologist who...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Studies for Competing Design Called Into Question
Rebecca D'Angelo for The New York Times
Vin Ferrara, a former Harvard quarterback and the founder of Xenith LLC, with a helmet that will cost about $350.
Cool!
Perhaps this could have a military application.
Regards
helmut; i remember them!
hehe
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Man that’s great! I wonder if they’ll come out with a motorcycle helmet?
I did a safety test on a Shoei helmet a couple of months ago and it worked pretty well. When I woke up in the hospital they told me it had saved my life, the downside was that my head still swelled up like a pumpkin.
dljordan - was your helmet full-faced, or modular? Bit of a discussion going on about their relative merits.
Thanks,
p.
Good deal.
Did it turn orange too?
(Robt knocks on hardhat ....)
“dljordan - was your helmet full-faced, or modular? Bit of a discussion going on about their relative merits.”
It was full faced thank God. I’ve got three others that aren’t but I only wore them when riding the Vulcan. When I rode the KLR650 I wore full-face to keep the branchs and stuff out of my face. If I ever ride again it will only be with the full-face helmet. The helmet is dinged up really bad from hitting the pavement but it worked.
Former Harvard QB Vin Ferrara — a multi-concussion victim as a player — is the brains behind a new football helmet that one researcher has called “the greatest advance in helmet design in 30 years.” From the New York Times’ Alan Schwartz :
Rather than being lined with rows of traditional foam or urethane, Ferrara’s helmet features 18 black, thermoplastic shock absorbers filled with air that can accept a wide range of forces and still moderate the sudden jarring of the head that causes concussion. Moreover, laboratory tests have shown that the disks can withstand hundreds of impacts without any notable degradation in performance, a longtime drawback of helmets’ traditional foam.
Dr. Gerry Gioia, a pediatric neuropsychologist who directs the concussion program at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, said Ferrara’s helmet could “take helmet protection to a whole new level.”
“I think it’s very real,” Gioia said. “Foams have only had a certain amount of success in absorbing force. Think of what crumple zones in cars meant to reducing injuries. That’s the idea behind this technology — this does what it’s supposed to do better than any other.”
Ferrara said that his company, Xenith LLC, expected the helmet to be available for the 2008 football season — either produced by Xenith or perhaps by license to an existing manufacturer. The price will be about $350, more than twice the cost of existing headgear. Ferrara, who after graduating from Harvard in 1996 earned medical and business degrees from Columbia, said he expected marketing to focus less on schools, whose budgets are tight, than parents with concern for their child.
Ferrara said he wanted his new shock-absorber helmet design to be only one of several lines of defense against concussions. Mindful that previous helmet improvements have occasionally led athletes to feel a false sense of security and take more risks, he said part of his rollout plan would be to emphasize to players and coaches proper, head-up tackling technique, so that the helmet sees fewer dangerous hits to begin with — as well as encouraging athletes to admit when they think they might have a concussion.
“The educational side of it is just as important, if not more important, as the helmet itself,” Ferrara said.
THinking about getting full face myself. the modular is good for the chin, compared to 3/4, but the hinge pin compromises its temple area, it’s been said. Currently use a modular.
p.
Brilliant. I wonder how long it will be before this appears in a riding helmet or hunt cap.
It’s pretty hard to beat EPS given the thickness constraints. Now a six inch thick helmet filled with air bags could be much more effective.
A similar concept is already being used by one manufacturer of impact pads for the PASGT and ACH helmet families. Skydex makes a dual-cup plastic shock absorber that it uses in conjunction with a soft foam for its helmet pads.
On the left is a hard/soft foam pad, while the Skydex pad is on the right. The company also makes floorboards for offshore racers, and seat cushions for military helicopters using this concept.
Good for this guy.
More serious are those who suffered head and neck injuries. Dementia and Alzheimer's sets in by mid to late forties.
No amount of salary can pay for a short future like that.
Thus, the inner helmet liner would have cushions similar to a soccer ball:
Of course, there'd have to be spacing between the cushions to allow for expansion/contraction.
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