Anti-Paralysis Helmet in the Works

Helmets are touted by everyone from children riding their bicycles to professional drivers as a means of averting injuries to the head. While, at times, they fulfill this purpose, existing helmets do little to protect the neck from injuries. This throws a constant shadow on the protection devices, as neck injuries oftentimes result in paralysis, due to traumas to the spinal cord and its nerve fibers. Now, Canadian scientists at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, are working on designing a new class of helmets that would ensure the spine is protected too, Technology Review reports.

The reason why the neck is so susceptible to damage is the fact that it absorbs the brunt of the dissipated force in case of a head-on collision. If we hit our head against a wall, both the skull and the neck bones will have to suffer. If we do the same thing wearing helmets, the impact energy is routed by the helmet's design around the skull, and straight into the neck, which usually crumbles under the sheer force of the blow. This very often results in broken vertebra, or even the sectioning of the spinal cord. Once this happens, the damage is irreversible, and the person who suffered the crash is paralyzed for life.

“I became interested in whether there was a way to convert the impact against a flat object into an impact against an angled object,” UBC mechanical engineer and biomechanics specialist Peter Cripton explains. He was the leader of the project, and also the coordinator of the team that developed the Pro-Neck-Tor helmet. Unlike other similar equipments, this device has two shells. The outer one looks just like a conventional helmet surface, whereas the inner one hugs the head. There is also a special mechanism connecting the two, the team reveals.

“The main purpose of helmets, whether in sports or transportation, is always to prevent brain injuries. We're trying to do something quite different. We're working toward a helmet with the same ability to prevent concussion, but also with the ability to prevent neck injuries,” Cripton adds. What the mechanism connecting the two shells does is release itself when the helmet is struck with sufficient force by something. This causes the inner shell to glide under the external one, allowing the head and neck to dissipate force as if they struck an angled surface, rather than a head-on one.

“Just putting more padding on your head isn't going to solve the neck injury problem, and it may even make it worse. It's a tough problem, but they're taking a unique approach, and I think it has potential. It'll have to be evaluated in many, many ways to make sure it's safe – you don't want to end up causing serious brain injury while preventing a serious neck injury,” Wayne State University injury biomechanics expert John Melvin says. He has been studying safer helmets since 1968, but was not a part of the new research.