I have a couple more things to say on the Travis Roy accident that are
germane to this list.   The first is that while neck injuries are
statistically very rare,  when they happen they are quite often
catastrophic.   Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant pointed out that during
the same week that Travis Roy was injured,  a player in Scandinavia (can't
remember which country) sustained such a severe laceration to the neck that
he bled to death in front of the entire crowd before anyone could do
anything to save him.   How does *that* make you feel?   Then,  just a
couple days ago,  Chris Pronger of the St. Louis Blues gave Pat Peak a
two-hander which sailed up higher than he intended.   The stick hit Peak in
the Adams apple and ruptured his thyroid cartilage.   Peak was lucky.
  He'll be back in a month.
 
     Now,  when we examine what we know about the Travis Roy tragedy,  I
personally am struck by the fact that we know almost nothing.   We haven't
talked to the doctors,  looked at the X-rays,  or examined the replays in
slow motion from many different view angles.   All of these things we would
need to do to be able to say that the injury was caused by:  a sudden sharp
bending moment to the neck,  a sudden sharp twisting moment,  compressive
stress,  or blunt trauma.   And even if I personally had access to all that
information,  I still could not say whether or not that *particular* injury
could have been prevented,  because my area of expertise is not solid
mechanics or biomechanics.
 
     But I am a mechanical engineer (fluids and thermal sciences);  and,  I
think engineers  --  certainly more than most people  --  see things in
terms of the possibilities rather than in terms of the impossibilities.
  And as an engineer,  I'm sitting here right now trying to think of how to
produce at least a small positive out of this very tragic situation with
Travis Roy.   The following is a proposal I made to Scott Lauber of The
Daily News at BU a few days ago.
 
     The thought I am pursuing has to do with the curriculum of most
Mechanical Engineering departments at universities around the nation these
days.   Almost all have design courses for juniors and/or seniors which are
often cast in the form of a competition and which are part of the core
curriculum  for the ME major.   Sort of like a sophisticated version of the
"dropping the egg from the second story window" contests we all used to do
in middle school.
 
      Anyway,  recognizing that there currently is an absolute lack of
hockey equipment to protect the neck area that is:  1) effective and:  2)
comfortable enough to wear under game conditions,  I think it would be
entirely appropriate if those ME departments at schools which play college
hockey used the design of neck protection for hockey players as the topic
for their design courses this year.   In addition,  the American Society of
Mechanical Engineers (ASME,  with branches on most campuses which offer ME
degrees) could be requested to referee a national competition which pitted
the winning project from each campus against each other.   The manufacturers
of protective equipment (CCM,  Cooper,  Bauer,  Louisville,  etc.) could be
solicited for the donation of prize money with the understanding that all
the involved manufacturers would have equal access to the technology created
by the contest.   The prize money could be split equally by the winning
contestants,  the advising professors,   and the scholarship fund of the
winning school.
 
     What do you think?   Would that spur some creativity?   I think it just
might,  and it would do a lot of good in the process.   Remember the point
of this proposal would not be to prevent all future accidents of the type
that Travis sustained (although that would certainly be wonderful if it
could be done).    The goal would be more modest since we probably don't
have enough information to do that.   The goal would be to invent *anything*
that would offer meaningful protection to the neck,  which is currently
unprotected.   We all wish Travis the best and most complete recovery
possible.   And while recognizing that what I am proposing here might not
help in cases involving the *exact* sort of injury that Travis received,  at
least we could eventually prevent some equally tragic situations in the
future.
 
     -- Dick Tuthill
 
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