I like the gas strut idea!
One thing to add about the leash. A friend of mine had the "ball" attached to the hull that the brace clips on to come loose and fall out. The brace unattached, ama folded in and they went turtle. The leash idea protects for both a sheer pin break or a failure in the brace attachment to the hull.
You always have tradoffs in any design and overall I think Hobie did a great job with the TI.. except maybe the safety issue of a collapsed Ama. You can add weight and make this issue go away but then you need a boat as light as possible in order for the mirrge drives to be fun (ie, adequate speed). Or.. beef things up to the point where you only would collapse the ama for setup or take down. And of course the manufacture has cost targets along with weight and performance. I picked the TI because it had the mirrage drive, if mine was stolen, I would get a another one.
I busted a sheer pin one time hitting a boey with the Ama. Wife was sitting in the front seat blocking my view so I didnt see it. I put this one in the category of a little careless and bad luck. And of course there is the category of busting a sheer pin doing something stupid LOL.
In the doing something stupid category, I posted this video several years ago and the discussion turned into something about right of way. Well.. this had nothing to do with right of way, it was more like two teenagers steeling a couple of cars and doing dumb stuff. We were having a little too much fun and I hit the back end of my buddies TI and popped the sheer pin. Kept sailing until I looked down and realized that the pin had broken and the leash was holding the Ama out. I just put in a new sheer pin out on the water, did a bunch more sailing that day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsoQX7txv6M