After years of debate on ways to make the sport safer, a standards panel approved in May the first specifications for a pole vaulting helmet, spurring production of several models.
A standard has been approved, after several years of discussion. However, to the best of my knowledge, no one has begun making a helmet that meets this standard.
There are
some helmets that probably meet this standard.
The KDMax helmet that is currently marketed and sold on www.polevaulthelmet.com does not meet the ASTM pole vault helmet standard that was recently passed.Head injury experts worry that some new helmets have come on the market without empirical data to show the need for or the effectiveness of the headgear.
"There is limited data for some of these kinds of sports," said Dr. Frederick P. Rivara, a pediatrics professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine who has studied helmet use among youngsters. "Before we push these kinds of helmets we need to have an idea on the effectiveness."
This was an issue raised at the ASTM meetings. Do we need a pole vault helmet? A response given was that since several states
require helmets, we ought to come up with a standard for what the kids are wearing because some of these helmets offer very little protection.
Dr. Tony Strickland, director of the Sports Concussion Institute at the Centinela Freeman Regional Medical Center in Marina del Rey, shares the same concerns, adding that poorly designed helmets could interfere with an athlete's hearing and vision.
One of the specifications in the ASTM pole vault helmet standard has to do preventing the helmet from limiting the athlete's field of vision in a negative way.
Because athletic associations and government agencies usually don't require helmets until a standard is set for thickness, shape, material and design, a campaign to mandate helmets for a sport often starts by persuading a testing agency to set a standard. Thus, the four panels are the target of heavy lobbying by helmet manufacturers and the parents of injured athletes.
This is a big reason the NFHS has not required helmets yet. Will they start requiring them now that the standard has been passed? That remains to be seen.
In the case of the pole vaulting helmet, Dare's father, Edward Dare, and his former Penn State coach, Tim Curley, launched a four-year campaign to improve pole-vaulting landing pads and require helmets.
Actually Tim Curley is the athletic director at Penn State.
Pole vaulting ranks far below most other sports in total head injuries. In 2001, the American Journal of Sports Medicine published a study that found 31 catastrophic head injuries associated with pole vaulting in the high school, college and amateur ranks between 1982 and 1998. Those accidents resulted in 16 deaths, according to the study.
The study did not compare pole vaulting injuries with other sports, but a Consumer Product Safety Commission study found that head injury incidents for pole-vaulters were relatively rare compared with other sports such as basketball (23,908), baseball (20,583) and football (20,128) in 1995 alone.
One of the authors of the 2001 pole vaulting study, 1972 Olympic pole vaulting bronze medalist, Jan Johnson, has been highly critical of the helmets. Johnson, who heads the pole vault safety committee for U.S. Track and Field, the governing body for high school track and field, said there has only been one catastrophic head injury since larger landing pads were adopted in 2002. "I think the problem was solved that way," he said.
I don't think Jan was actually an author of the study... more like the source used for the data on pole vault injuries.
Although the study did not investigate the pros and cons of a pole vault helmet, Johnson says he worries that they may cause spinal injuries by hyper-flexing a vaulter's neck on impact with the padding. "I am not a real strong advocate for helmets in pole vaulting," he said.
Jan is definitely not the only one worried about this. The medical personnel involved with USATF pole vault development are extremely concerned about this issue as well.
Even the ASTM, while considering a pole vaulting helmet, warned that such headgear would not eliminate the risk of head injuries altogether.
Nope. If you are 10+ feet in the air, it is impossible to completely eliminate all risks.
But Dare's father continues to press the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Assns. to require helmets for all pole-vaulters.
Dare said there was no evidence that the helmets cause neck injuries. As for Johnson's suggestion that the larger padding has solved the problem, Dare said: "Tell that to the next parents whose son or daughter vaults and hits their head on the asphalt and dies."
This raises the next issue that the ASTM pole vault equipment subcommittee is working on: the padding of the hard and unyielding surfaces around the pit.
The rule that hard and unyielding surfaces around the pit must be covered has been on the books for quite awhile. The next step is being more specific about what a hard and unyielding surface is, and what types of padding should be used to cover it.