Kerr Collar Aims To Reduce Number Of Head, Neck Injuries In Football
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Despite greater awareness in recent years about concussions, there's still a lot of work to be done in preventing them.
In fact, maybe all this talk about better protection has been focused on the wrong part of players' bodies.
The helmet is football's most iconic piece of equipment.
It's currently also the last line of defense against head injuries. But, maybe there's a new way.
"When you look at football equipment right now, the neck has zero protection. So you have no interaction for the helmet coming down into the shoulder pads," says Dr. Patrick Kerr.
Kerr has created the Kerr Collar.
"We want to have the helmet touch the Kerr Collar and disperse the force to the Kerr Collar and not let the helmet and neck take everything," says Kerr.
He says we've been so focused on the helmet that no one has bothered to look into connecting the helmet to the shoulder pads.
"We want to look at the head and neck together during a collision and not just the head," says Kerr.
No one device can eliminate injury risk completely, but Kerr says dozens of crash tests conducted at Virginia Tech's Center for Injury Biomechanics show this simple piece of equipment can reduce the force on the neck by 58 percent.
"Fifty-eight percent is better than zero. Anything that's gonna help improve the safety of a child is something I'm very interested in," says high school football coach Mike Spina.
According to a study by Purdue University and The University of Michigan, the average high school football player takes 650 hits per year.
That combined head trauma is equivalent to a 30 mph car wreck.
It's been six years since Rutgers player Eric LeGrand fractured two vertebrae during a game. He was left paralyzed from the neck down.
LeGrand has since been able to regain use of his shoulders, but his life is forever changed.
"I'm sitting here and I need my mom, the nurses and friends to feed me and do everything for me," says LeGrand.
Last season we saw the highest rate of catastrophic injury in high school football.
Ten players were paralyzed, and because of injuries to the neck, two players lost their lives.
"If we're going to play this game, we'd better start understanding it better than we do now. Putting a kid out there without neck protection, you're just asking for trouble. You're asking for an injury," says Kerr.
The Kerr Collar costs $150.
It's sold on Amazon and at Dick's Sporting Goods.
Join The Conversation On The KDKA Facebook Page
Stay Up To Date, Follow KDKA On Twitter