Most people know that wearing a bike helmet reduces the chances you’ll be injured if you crash. But until now, there were no ratings that tracked actual, real world head impacts to determine which helmets protect best.
The "thwack, thwack" of a crash test dummy head in a bike helmet slamming into an anvil reverberates through Viginia Tech's Helmet lab. It’s the testing protocol developed by researchers here and it simulates the impact of a bike crash powerful enough to give the rider a concussion.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has long required bike helmet testing. But Post-Doctoral Student Megan Bland, who conducted the research, says it didn’t really get at how people are actually hitting their heads.
“When you fall off your bike you actually approach the ground at an angle with your head. You have both what we call normal and tangential velocities. Standard testing has only looked at ‘normal,’ so what we did is, use an angled anvil to simulate that angled impact that you would have in the real world.”
The helmets that rated highest all have something called MIPS. That stands for ‘Multi Directional Impact Protection Systems.’
“So that when you have a crash and hit your head on the road, the helmet kind of sticks initially and your head then, is allowed to move a little bit separately and more smoothly so you’re actually reducing the kind of impact forces you’re seeing and, which is important for reducing risk of injury.”
All four of the top-rated helmets were the classic kind, with the pointed front and air vents. Not faring as well, were what’re known as urban helmets, smoother and round with fewer vents and a thicker shell.
Bland says, that where she lives, on a college campus in Blacksburg, she sees a lot of them. “Aesthetics is a big appeal and they do look kind of cool. They’re sometimes advertised to be all weather helmets because they keep your warm in winter. But, I just don’t think that manufacturers may really have had as clear an indication that those helmets were performing so much worse.”
As of today, they do.
The highest rated models varied in cost from $75 to $200. None of the helmets tested were rated marginal or ‘not recommended.’
Bland says, “Wearing any helmet is safer than not wearing a helmet at all, but we’re hoping that with these ratings more people will be encouraged to engage in cycling, they’ll feel safer while doing it, and helmets will be made safer by manufacturers."
8-hundred-thirty-five cyclists were killed in 2016. More than half of them were not wearing helmets. The lab will test more helmets for other sports and plans to test children’s helmets as well.
Here’s a link to their website, which they’ll update as new results come in.
The bike helmet study was funded by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
RADIO IQ is a service of Virginia Tech.
