I wonder about that. In theory it seems like it should help, but at the same time, there were lots of fatalities in the early, leather-helmet days of the sport.
Honestly, the simplest solution to me seems to be switching to flag football or something similar.
They either need to make it safer or stop the sport altogether. Or at least stop letting kids play tackle. If an adult wants to make that choice, maybe we let them, but don't let adults make that choice for kids.
> but at the same time, there were lots of fatalities in the early, leather-helmet days of the sport.
This is a good point. We'd need to know if that was because medical science was worse or if it was actually less safe.
We know that players would not be "far more cautious," because they were not more cautious in the era of leather helmets.