During the 2016 season, the Washington Huskies will wear football helmets designed by Seattle-based startup Vicis, in an attempt to reduce the possibility of concussions on the football field.
“All the testing, all the speculation (suggest that) there’s nothing like it on the market,” [Washington coach Chris] Petersen said. “You’re not going to take concussions out of the game with any sort of helmet, but we do think — from what we’ve been told and what we’ve seen and what’s out there — it’ll be the safest helmet on the market.”
The helmets aren't cheap, costing $1,500 each. While that will be prohibitively expensive for most schools, the University of Washington is an ideal place to pilot them, as the school recently received a $2.5 million grant for concussion research from the NFL.
Vicis plans on releasing their Zero1 helmet to a limited number of college and professional teams this season, and then expanding more broadly next year.
