So if there’s really no chance to have umbrellas banned, the next best thing to do is mitigate one of their worst features.
The spokes have always been designed to have quite sharp little endponts, in order to allow them to be captured and retained by an axially-sliding ring near the handle, when the whole thing is folded up.
Today’s invention is to supply push-on, coloured foam hemispheres, one per spike. This would at least prevent umbrellas being the cause of any further ophthalmic injuries.
If the spokes still need to be retained when the brolly is ‘down’ then that might be better achieved by a strong elastic band, slid down outside the skin from the central pommel to nearer the handle.
