Sports engineering practices applied to public brain injury prevention

Engineering of Sport 15 - Proceedings from the 15th International Conference on the Engineering of Sport (ISEA 2024)

It is estimated annually that 69 million individuals suffer from traumatic brain injuries (TBI). The sporting goods industry sit at the forefront of helmet innovation, particularly for American Football (AF). Research within AF has introduced methods for measuring helmet impact attenuation, a test standard and specification revisions, and produced injury criteria (IC) which correlate impact kinematics with injury probability. These practices are being applied to other sports applications and, if effective, could reduce TBI rates across the sports industry. This suggests the adoption of these strategies for applications outside of sport may further reduce global TBI rates, particularly if targeted at high-risk occupations. The objective of this paper is to highlight strategies used in sports helmet development with recommendations for application to Public Order (PO, ‘Riot Police’), as injuries in this setting can be particularly severe and research would have global impact.