Part of my day job involves keeping up with the latest
technology, and this past week that meant following developments at the massive
Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Out of all the gadgets on display at CES, from an
encapsulated three-wheel-vehicle thing from Toyota to a toothbrush that
downloads data to your smartphone, one particularly caught my eye. Reebok’s
Checklight Impact Sensor, a skullcap that monitors hits to the head, was first
demonstrated at last year’s CES. Now it’s back in the form of a production
model with an under-$150 street price that was
demonstrated memorably
by a human punch-model.
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| Checklight photo courtesy BusinessWire. |
After reading the specs and details on the sensor and
thinking about its applications for hockey, I guarantee you two things: The
Checklight or something like it will be required or semi-required by virtually
every hockey organization in the country within two years, and it will be
misunderstood or misused by virtually all of them.
I can start proving that assertion right now.
One
of the stories on the sensor carries the headline, “Reebok CHECKLIGHT Impact
Sensor Cap Helps Keep Athletes Safe.” No; it doesn’t really keep athletes safe.
The Checklight detects serious head impacts and lights when the severity of
impacts surpass a fixed level. It doesn’t detect or diagnose concussions. It’s
simply a monitor of blows to the head, and wearing a monitor of blows to the
head won’t lessen the frequency or severity of those blows.
Think of it another way. This is not a sensor built into a
pair of jeans that detects shoplifting, or a camera that automatically photographs
(and tickets) people who run red lights. This is a check-engine light that
comes on when something in its environment sets it off, and knowing that your
check-engine light might come on does not change the way you drive.
The second and broader way the Checklight likely will be
misused comes under the general heading of “do we really want to know?” Who
truly benefits from the impartial, impersonal, machine-generated knowledge that
someone has sustained a serious blow to the head, and who might be threatened
by that knowledge?
Obviously, the athlete benefits. Not every athlete in the
heat of competition is sufficiently attuned to their physical state to realize
they have sustained severe head contact. Some are simply too young to grasp the
situation. Having this information available to these athletes, their coaches
and parents seems immediately and obviously to be a good thing … provided someone
takes appropriate action.
Appropriate action: Here’s where things get tricky. What is
appropriate action? Does calling a penalty constitute appropriate action? A
game misconduct? Suspensions? Or is it something more nuanced?
To answer that, consider the technology behind the
Checklight. The Checklight is calibrated to trigger at the same point for
everyone who wears it. However, people aren’t Rock-‘Em Sock-‘Em Robots; the
concussion threshold is different for every person. This means there are four
possibilities when someone wearing a Checklight is hit in the head: the contact
was insufficient to light the light or cause a concussion; the contact was
sufficient to light the light and cause a concussion; the contact was
sufficient to light the light but not cause a concussion; or the contact was
not sufficient to light the light but was sufficient to cause a concussion.
The last two are very possible and extremely troublesome, if
the Checklight enjoys widespread acceptance and is used as a determining factor
in removing a player from a game. If the Checklight indicates severe head
contact but the contact did not cause a concussion, and there are
organizational mandates that a player be removed from a game when his
Checklight lights and it’s a big game … you can see where this is going. Throw
in a my-son’s-going-pro parent and you’ve got the recipe for a brouhaha that
could easily wind up in a courtroom.
You can certainly argue that mandated removal is erring on
the side of caution, but it’s extremely imperfect erring-on-the-side-of-caution.
No coach this side of the NFL would
play
a concussed player knowingly in any game, but seeing as the Checklight
isn’t a concussion-diagnosis tool, how many coaches would hold out a player
from a crucial game solely on the basis of a lit-up Checklight and no other
symptoms – unless they have to?
Coaches and officials are in a pickle with Checklight. Consider the scenario where the light doesn’t
light but the player suffers a concussion. If a coach and officials let a concussed
player with an unlit Checklight keep playing, and s/he sustains another head
impact and suffers severe injuries from Second Impact Syndrome, who is liable?
The coach, who made the decision in ignorance of evidence to the contrary? The
officials, who didn’t remove the lit player from the game and didn’t take steps
to keep further head contact from occurring? The sanctioning body, which made (or
didn’t make) a rule that allowed concussed players to keep playing? Reebok, for
making a unit that can’t distinguish between significant but not injury-causing
head contact and contact sufficient to cause concussion?
My wife is a former actuary and hockey mom who’s unusually
attuned to liability issues. She says she wouldn’t touch the Checklight – not
because it doesn’t work but because of liability concerns like these. At some
point someone is going to be held liable, and it’s going to be whoever’s caught
holding the hot potato.
I come at this from a different angle. At times with my day
job I’m a data person. In my line of work, data is isn’t any good if you don’t
collect it, and once you collect it, you need to do something with it. I would
think and hope that data from the Checklight would not stop with the
Checklight. If
sharks
can send tweets when they’re approaching shore, Checklights should be able
to send notification of head injuries to multiple sanctioning bodies – the
NCAA, USA Hockey, the local organization, the state organization, academic
researchers, medical authorities, whomever – via USB now and wirelessly in the
future. There’s potential with the Checklight to collect and aggregate a
staggering amount of information on head contact. If every hockey player from
the squirt level up wore a Checklight, and if the data from those Checklights
was sent to USA Hockey, then USA Hockey would know once and for all the scope
of severe head contact in youth hockey.
But maybe, just maybe, USA Hockey (or Pop Warner Football or
the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association or whomever) doesn’t want to
know the scope of severe head contact in their sport. Knowing carries with it
the obligation to do something about it, and if a sanctioning body is unwilling
or unable to do something about it, it might be better to plead ignorance.
If, for instance, Checklight data shows USA Hockey that
there were significantly more instances of severe head contact than the
organization had previously believed or was willing to admit, what could the
organization do with that data? Use it as rationale for banning all head
contact? Stiffen penalties for offenders? Based on past experience with similar
rule changes, whatever safety steps USA Hockey would propose would meet with
fierce opposition, Checklight data or no. And if the organization accedes to
rank-and-file pressure and balks at making changes in the face of empirical
data that demands changes, then what?
(Just as a case study in the value -- or cost -- of knowing, once the National Football League realized the scope of severe head injuries suffered by players, it settled with a group of former players for whatever it could. In this case it turned out to be between $765 million and $914 million -- and a judge just
threw out the settlement, saying the players weren't getting paid enough.)
I know what I’d do, if I were a sanctioning organization.
First, this issue is too important not to collect data when the opportunity to
collect data is so immediate and obvious. I’d buy Checklights for a sample
population and collect the data on head contact. If the data suggested a
significant problem and/or additional study, I’d spend the money, escalate the
study, and analyze the data from that study.
If the data from that escalated study showed a greater level
of head contact than previously thought and a significant correlation between
lit Checklights and concussions, I’d mandate Checklight purchase, remove
players with lit Checklights from games, and severely penalize opposing teams –
but more importantly, I’d gather data on teams and players that delivered the
triggering hits and require that data to be reported up along with the data on
the hit itself. The only way to lessen the occurrence of head injuries is to
remove the culture of headhunting from the sport (any sport, from lacrosse to
hockey), and the first step to doing that is to identify the headhunters.
In short, the Checklight is a highly imperfect step forward
– but a step forward nonetheless. Kudos to Reebok; the company has met a
definite need, and deserves to profit from doing so. In the next several weeks,
we hope to have an interview with Reebok and officials from sanctioning bodies
discussing the Checklight and its implications. It could be that some of these
concerns are groundless. (I hope so.) It could be that we’re thinking ahead of
the people whose job it is to think ahead. (I hope not.) One way or another,
we’re going to find out.
