Protecting Professional Hockey Players' Heads

Baseball pitchers can get beaned by hardballs that can cause devastating facial and brain injuries.  Likewise, professional ice hockey players face injury from fast flying pucks, stick wielding opponents, hard ice and checks into walls and plexiglass.  Virtually every country in the world has some workplace safety regulations.  So it is no surprise that there is safety regulation in professional sports in the United States

The National Hockey League (“NHL”) required its newly acquired players to wear helmets starting in 1979, but it exempted veterans, the last of whom played without them until 1997. Cornell economics professor Robert Frank wrote about the economics of safety for the New York Times using the NHL protective headgear as an example.  Helmets are required in the National Hockey League, but that’s a fairly recent development. According to Professor Frank,

“Many players had believed that they could see and hear better without them. When everyone skated without helmets, the relative advantage disappeared, resulting in gratuitous risk of injury to all players. In 1979, the N.H.L. required all newly hired players to wear helmets, but veterans were exempted. Some continued to skate without a helmet until 1997, believing that it gave them an edge — but today’s players seem to see futility in sacrificing safety for an unsustainable relative advantage.”

Evidence tends to suggest that even well-informed workers in perfectly competitive markets will tend to buy too little safety on their own.  Hence the need for athletic leagues, like employers with long-range plans, to eliminate unnecessary injuries and losses, where safety engineering and available products can significantly reduce or eliminate such risks. Professor Frank’s analysis of the economic and moral perspectives and findings shed light on the decision-making of consumers and pro athletes.