If you鈥檝e been following the news, you鈥檇 be forgiven for thinking that football is the number one cause of sports-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in the country. But you鈥檇 be wrong: it鈥檚 cycling. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a in early 2015 that showed bicycling played a role in more than 68,000 TBIs in 2012, compared to football鈥檚 64,000.
The CCS study bluntly states, 鈥淭BIs resulting from sports and recreational activities have become a major health problem in the U.S.鈥 Research indicates that 15 percent to 20 percent of all persons with mild TBI may have long-term physical, cognitive, and emotional consequences.鈥 Between 2001 and 2010, the number of sports-related injuries treated in emergency departments increased 5 percent, to 4.1 million, with the majority of included TBI cases involving youth hurt in bike accidents.
鈥淥nce the awareness [of how many bicyclists are suffering concussions] catches on, there鈥檚 going to be changes to the way parents protect their children riding bikes,鈥 says Dr. Frederick Boop, president of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
Of course, apart from keeping people from riding at all, the best way to protect against a concussion is by wearing a helmet. Recently, a team of biomedical and engineering researchers at Virginia Tech have been testing and rating the effectiveness of more than 100 brands of bicycle helmets for a study that will be published in 2017. Stefan Duma, the professor overseeing the effort, maintains that while no bicycle helmet is concussion-proof, he thinks there鈥檚 plenty of room to improve helmet design and technology to better reduce concussion risks.
Because this issue is very important to us, we decided to sidestep the logistical and financial constraints that designers and researchers face, and instead imagine our own perfect brain armor meant to prevent or at least reduce the severity of concussions.
Interior Foam and Gel
Researchers have found that most bike helmets on the market today, which usually have a layer of hard expanded polystyrene foam surrounded by a rigid shell, are very capable at preventing skull fractures and hemorrhages, but they鈥檙e not so good at protecting a rider from a TBI. To improve upon this current design, Anna K. Abramson, an internal medicine physician at the University of California and co-chair of the Medicine of Cycling Conference, recommends we manipulate the helmet interior by introducing a thick layer of gelatin鈥攍ike a room-temperature gel ice pack鈥攕urronded by polystyrene foam. 鈥淚f you hit your head, a nonfabric padding like gel or water could absorb more of an impact than what current helmets offer,鈥 says Abramson.
Exterior Shell
The outer shell of our perfect helmet should work like a car bumper, which crumples upon impact in specific ways to protect the integrity of the car鈥檚 body. Another benefit: the space聽between the bumper and the car that these crumple zones provide聽allow the聽car to more gradually come to a stop, reducing whiplash and other injuries.
For our purposes, we want to delay and absorb the impact, gradually slowing the movement of our brains inside our skulls after a collision. 鈥淭he whole idea is that you鈥檙e taking a certain amount of force, and you鈥檙e trying to lengthen the time it impacts your head,鈥 says Dr. Steve Broglio, who chairs the Medicine of Cycling Research Task Force and researches concussions. He points to a that tested air bag bicycle helmets as a good example of these physics at work: researchers found the air bag helmets reduced head acceleration up to six times compared to traditional helmets. Our crumpling exterior shell would have the same effect while adding a bit of rigidity to protect against skull fractures.
Neck Brace
Football players wear to reduce the chances of neck and shoulder injuries resulting from big collisions. that these polystyrene foam collars reduce the chances of overextending the neck, so that鈥檚 why we鈥檙e attaching something similar to our helmet.
But because bicyclists need to be able to turn their heads to see cars and pedestrians, we鈥檇 make our neck brace lightweight and flexible. Attached to the base of the helmet, the brace would wrap around the neck and shoulders and provide just enough protection to support a cyclist鈥檚 neck in the event of a collision but not enough to severely inhibit range of motion.
Light
For a cyclist riding at night, a powerful, effective light is just as important as a good helmet, says Dr. Mark Greve, a clinical associate professor at Brown University and team physician for the Team Novo Nordisk road racing program. We鈥檇 attach a light directly to our lid so you鈥檇 never forget it at home鈥攁lthough it would be detachable鈥攁nd equip it with the same bright, long-lasting LED bulb found in .
Parachute
If a cyclist crashed while going faster than, say, 30 miles per hour, there鈥檚 not a whole lot that a helmet鈥攅ven our helmet鈥攃ould do to protect her. To prevent catastrophic injuries, the rider needs to slow down quickly. That鈥檚 why we鈥檙e attaching a fail-safe in the form of a parachute. This device, held in a small pouch on the back of the helmet, would use electrical-mechanical sensors (similar to the air bag helmet鈥檚 method of deployment) to release when the sudden acceleration of a rider鈥檚 head exceeds 20 miles per hour. The neck brace would, in theory, protect against whiplash, while the parachute would slow the rider significantly.