Originally Posted by
jnbrown
I also have been considering a new helmet because my helmet is 7 years old and came to the following conclusions:
The helmets I am most interested in are not available in the U.S. (MET and ABUS)
I was thinking that the foam in helmets degrades over time and that would be a reason to buy a new one - but it turns out not to be the case so the helmet I have is still good and I do not need to spend money on a new one.
There are no peer reviewed studies that prove MIPs is effective.
The studies that were done was with dummy heads, not real people.
There is no published data from actual accidents that shows that MIPs is effective.
I have no problem with people wanting a helmet with MIPs, but I have seen no proof that it makes a difference.
There are other factors that are probably more important than MIPs.
This dummy head study was peer reviewed and strongly suggests that MIPs is effective at preventing rotational injury.:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6928098/
I don't know what you would consider to be "proof", but this is pretty good. Using real heads in experiments presents some ethical problems what with injuring the subjects, and I don't think cadaver heads are likely to produce anything significantly different from dummy heads. Data from real-world crashes would be too noisy to be of any use, we really would have no way of knowing what rotational forces any given crash victim might have undergone and, if you think about it for two seconds, the data would be heavily skewed towards reporting failures. The odds are excellent that a helmet success would never get reported as people will simply walk/ride away from most of those crashes. There's also a bit of selection bias possible--people who ride faster/more/harder may be more prone to seek out MIPs helmets than less "intense" riders and so you could see a disproportionately high level of injury among MIPs users even if the helmets were more effective.
Anyway, there's certainly no proof that MIPs does any harm, and it really doesn't cost (much) more at this point.
But, yeah, your 7 year old helmet is probably fine. That's not sarcastic, btw.