Safe as Rugby ?

David Post over at Volokh has an interesting way of thinking about risk aversion* in football: less padding = less injuries?

So I raised my hand and asked the stupid question: instead of trying to design the perfect helmet and armor for the players to wear, is anyone seriously thinking about going in the opposite direction, i.e., taking away some of the padding that the players are wearing, as a way to reduce the frequency of severe injury?

My model for that is rugby — it’s a damned violent sport, played at the highest professional level in dozens of countries around the world with world-class athletes, and yet the frequency of serious injury is much, much lower than in American football. A large part of the reason is that the players wear virtually no padding at all — you can’t run into someone a full tilt, head down, throwing the full weight of your body into the blow (the way you can in football) if you don’t have the full panoply of helmet and shoulder pads and all the rest.

It seems, to me, like it’s at least worth considering (though the reaction was mostly nervous laughter at the conference when I raised the question — the general feeling being that the public would never stand for it).

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* It's somewhat similar to the way many treat insurance: the more you have, the more you (might think you) can afford to risk...