Originally Posted by
Deontologist
Where did you hear that?
There was a test of a few standard EPS foam based helmets. The regular helmets made of black foam.
Everything from a sub 20 dollar model to the pricey models performed almost identically in terms of reducing head acceleration.
It's unfortunate that the CPSC standards were enshrined in law. They pretty much stopped a lot of safety innovation in helmets.
If you believe that the CPSC drop test on top of the helmet from a proscribed height translates into equivalent safety in all such rated helmets, then this is true. A helmet with more coverage of the head will protect from more intrusive injuries from aspects other than a straight down from the top. So it's not true that all CPSC helmets provide identical protection or performance. It is true that they all pass the same test. The question is whether that test is representative of what the helmet is actually called upon to do in real life. I don't think it is. In point of fact, I'd wonder if the test they use bears any real resemblance to even the most common hits that helmets take. Let's just say, I'm not impressed with the CPSC methodology or testing.
Now, there are a few innovative designs out there, such as MIPS helmets, cardboard helmets, and green straw Koroyd helmets along with airbags held around your neck. I don't think any of them have been conclusively shown to be safer.
This is hopefully the start of some real innovation in helmet design. The "conclusively shown" method generally requires a number of real life statistics to prove their efficacy. I think it's possible to be able to make a studied decision based on engineering and science and have a pretty good idea of increased safety or TBI protection capabilities and increase one's safety. I don't think I need to wait for some number of head injuries to occur (or not occur) before I can make a pretty reasonable decision about better protection.
If, for example, if you look at the mechanism that the MIPS helmets use to deal with oblique hits, I think it's pretty obvious to see that at the worst case, it will do no additional harm. Best case and based on their FEM data, I think it's pretty clear that there is a significant benefit to using a MIPS helmet in the event of a crash involving an oblique hit to the head. What's also interesting is that you can get this technology at a pretty small premium in some helmets out now (Scott, I believe has some very cost effective MIPS helmets).
I don't think there is any question that helmets reduced the number of penetrating injuries to the skull and skull fractures which often have high mortality associated with them. What they have not done is much (at best very little) to reduce the effects of shearing style concussions (e.g. "Shaken Baby Syndrome") style traumatic brain injuries (TBI). These injuries can be and many times are more debilitating than a skull fracture. Now that some manufacturers are venturing past the CPSC requirements, we're hopefully going to see real improvement in this area (finally).
For our family, after some up close and personal experience with severe TBI, we've chosen to go hard into the MIPS style helmets. I've spent a lot of time working through the engineering aspects of this with some of the suppliers and with MIPS in general to gain an understanding of how and why it works. I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that it works well but that even if it turns out it doesn't, it will do no harm. We've replaced our skiing helmets all with MIPS now and will are in the process of converting all our bike helmets over to MIPS this year as we go through the recommended replacement cycle on helmets due to age and usage. I'd hypothesize that we are going to see some good numbers on MIPS equipment as time passes. If we don't - which is the least likely outcome in our view - we'll have invested about two hundred dollars in protection that didn't come to pass (premium for 8 MIPS helmets over regular helmets). That's a pretty good risk proposition in our view.
J.