Bicycle and motorcycle helmets have to be replaced every couple of years and after any accident or drop in order to be safe. Why then are football helmets, which encounter more frequent impacts, safe to be used over and over again? Is there a reason vehicle helmets couldn’t be designed like football helmets?
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Football players have some of the worst head trauma in sports. The helmet can only do so much. Also I imagine D1 and NFL teams get new helmets every year or game even.
Certain materials are very good at absorbing impacts but can only do it once before they are no longer usable. These materials are very effective so they are used in bicycle and motorcycle helmets.
Football helmets can’t make use of these materials because they need to stand up to multiple hits, you can’t give every player a new helmet every single play. Modern Football helmets are engineered with materials that are pretty good at impact absorption as well as durability, but generally single use materials are still better, so they are preferred for applications that do not require more resilient materials, like bike and motorcycle helmets.
TL;DR they are not as good at protecting the head as helmets that can only be used once, because you need to make compromises to allow them to be more durable, but they are getting closer as we get better materials to put in them.
They’re designed differently to function differently. Riding fast requires more force protection at the expense of breathability and function of the neck shoulders. Football helmets need to let the player breathe and have more motion for example.
1/2 mass x velocity squared = force.
Once you’re moving fast, your size and mass play a less significant factor to force. Higher speeds will cause more force exponentially faster than mass ever can.
Also football helmets don’t make it safe, they make it more safe.
they aren’t really very safe. chronic head injuries are pretty much a given with football players. It’s a wildly unsafe sport to the point that “unsafe” might not be the right word anymore, it’s more like “always harmful.”
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