Industry News
The Snow League, the world’s first professional sports league dedicated to snowboarding and freeskiing, announced it piloted Crash Patch™–the first-ever helmet sticker designed to immediately signal major impacts–at its event at Buttermilk at Aspen Snowmass, Colorado, where the world’s top snowboarders competed in the halfpipe. Select athletes wore the stickers and teams handed out 5,000 for free to attendees during the two-day event from February 27-28.
“Pushing limits drives snowboarding, but protection has to keep pace,” Shaun White, co-founder of the Snow League Co-founder said. “Athlete safety has always been personal to me. At The Snow League, we’re always looking for ways to better support athletes at the highest level. Piloting Crash Patch was one way we encouraged our athletes to make smart decisions in the moment.”
Crash Patch upcycles industrial shock-detection technology into a sticker that is designed to visually indicate when a rider’s helmet has sustained a hit of 75 times the force of gravity (75G) or more, a high-risk alert threshold set by neurologists, according to the Journal of Neural Trauma.
In high-adrenaline snow sports, impacts at this level can be difficult to gauge by feel alone, and symptoms may be delayed. Crash Patch, created by health marketing agency Klick Health, turns that invisible moment into a clear visual cue, helping riders and teammates recognize potentially dangerous hits that might otherwise go unnoticed.
“Snow sports move fast, and dangerous impacts don’t always look dramatic, but Crash Patch can make the unseen visible,” Klick Health Chief Creative Officer Rich Levy said. “It’s a simple tool designed to fit seamlessly into snowboard culture and style. Our goal is to prompt smarter, more responsible decisions and encourage riders and teams to pause, assess, and act responsibly after a crash or fall.”
We were so excited to pilot Crash Patch with The Snow League. We gave away thousands of Crash Patch stickers, and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from athletes and attendees alike.”
— Rich Levy
Nearly half of head impacts in snow sports can cause serious damage, according to Clinical Biomechanics, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says even without immediate symptoms, impacts as low as 75G can accumulate and increase long-term risk. “The more information people have after hitting their head, the better their chances of a healthy outcome,” Adam Pearce added. Pearce is the co-founder and Executive Director of LoveYourBrain Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for people affected by traumatic brain injury.
