Sports Safety Equipment: Sports Helmets
As safety has become a greater concern over the years in sports, one of the essential safety items to be featured in sports is the helmet. Many sports out there require the players to wear helmets. A large number of examples can be seen in the world of motorsports, cycling, American football, baseball, winter sports, horse riding, mountain climbing and many others. It seems each sport has its own helmets made to certain specifications and they usually cannot be interchanged between sports. It has been proven that helmets although may not save lives but are essential in protecting the head in impacts and reducing injuries to the head and reducing brain damage.
If one is to watch any sport on TV today; that sport will usually feature some sort of helmet or headgear that the players are wearing. A few exceptions are evident such as football and rugby but in most others, a helmet is required wear. Some sports require a full helmet to be worn, the kind that comes with a full visor and covers the entire head of the person wearing it. This is the kind of helmet that is used in motorsports; car racing and MotoGP and others. Some say helmets are cumbersome and unnecessary but they have been proven to protect against head injuries that can lead to permanent brain damage.
Studies have shown that almost a quarter of people in the US who are brought into the emergency room of hospitals after accidents have some sort of head injuries and one out of eight of these people have a degree of brain damage. This situation gets amplified in the high speed and competitive world of sports. Most competitive sports are done at such high speeds that the athletes are in high risk environments where a crash can easily kill them. Sports such as motorcycle racing are extremely dangerous because of the extreme speeds and there are numerous crashes in almost every race. If riders were not wearing helmets they would almost certainly have brain damage and many more head injuries than they currently receive.
Winter sports, such as skiing and snowboarding, are types of sports where helmets are an absolute necessity for people taking part in them. The high speeds at which skiers and snowboarders travel in makes wearing a helmet essential and the threat of a crash and injury is so great that without a helmet these sports would not be practical for the average person. There are those extreme fans that go out of their way to do crazy things like not wearing a helmet but these people are very rare. Even the craziest of the crazy extreme sports people; the BASE jumpers out there wear helmets when they leap off buildings or cliffs. Many people have been injured while skiing and snowboarding and over the years it has become standard practice to wear helmets to protect people’s heads while they take part in these sports.
There are many different designs and types of helmets that are used in many different sports and this sometimes annoys people who take part in numerous sports in their lives. They do not understand the need to wear different helmets and it is just a hassle and an added cost for them to bear. One safety website gives a list of different helmets that are used for different sports and a count brings up 17 different types of helmets that can be used. There are many that are not mentioned in the list such as car racing and extreme sports but the ones mentioned are everyday sports that people take part in. Many athletes ask why they cannot just have one helmet for all the sports they take part in. Well a reason for this is that some sports have their own unique problems that the athlete has to contend with and these unique problems necessitate the need for a special type of helmet. But some companies and groups are coming up with new helmets that are multipurpose and can be used in more than one sport. Even though there will never be a single helmet for all sports but this multi sport helmet is a step in that direction to give sportspeople a chance to use only one helmet for numerous sports they play.
Helmets have become essential safety equipment in many sports and people are not allowed to take part in some of them without wearing a helmet. They are especially useful in children’s sports these days and are a great way to protect kids’ heads. Soon we might see one helmet for every sport being introduced but that is still a long way away. Even though some people find them annoying they provide an essential and very necessary function in the safety of sportspeople’s heads.
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