Hydrofoil Concussion Protection

[gmb13]

I am pretty sure that this has been discussed here in another post, but current helmets do not prevent concussions, some even increase the likelyhood.

A concussion is your brain hitting the inside wall of your skull as a result of a massive deceleration on impact. A normal helmet does not do to prevent this. A helmet prevents your skull from being split open by that impact, but the deceleration is still there.

In my experience I prefer going fast on a foil without a helmet, as I have had more concussions with than without. I hope in the future someone will invent a good watersports helmet to address this as I feel wearing a helmet is necessary to protect you from your (and others) foils and boards.



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Gunnar

[Matty V]

Agree^^^^

They are great if you need protection from something hard on the shoreline or your gear.

For preventing brain trauma( concussion) not so much

[Michaelr123]

I don't think this was designed with hydrofoils in mind, but its cool to see these next-gen impact foams making their way to water sports. For cycling they made a crumple zone style helmet that also outperforms any hard foam and shell construction helmet by a mile. New "soft" football helmets are being tried at the collegiate level to reduce concussions as well.

I would guess that a hydro foil impact would require a combo of a hardshell with a softshell to increase the impact area and then slow down the accelerations due to the hard knife edges that can lead to cuts.

Maybe there's a business idea in this discussion to build a helmet specifically for hydrofoiling?