Originally Posted by
Sy Reene
If we get into the test protocols, and how these originally came out when MIPS was being introduced, there are simply in my mind, more questions than answers.
MIPS' selling point, is primarily I believe based on reducing concussion incidence from rotational impacts, with the MIPS liner providing some rotation give that can prevent that. However, then why have a test protocol that eliminates all of the pre-existing mitigators of rotational impact when testing a helmet, such as:
1. Humans (most) have hair.. this moves
2. Humans have necks, the heads on top of them bend and rotate
3. Humans have a scalp/skin -- which slides a bit over the cranium underneath
4. Humans often wear helmet liners or thermal caps for sun protection and/or insulation in cold weather.
Rather, the test protocol is strapping a helmet strongly to a somewhat tacky, hard, and bald immovable head form. Given that Va Tech at least for other sports, seems to actually test those helmets with bendable neck forms, this seems very strange. With VaTech's test methodology, it does support MIPS, as it MIPS does introduce a slip plane to a test object that has none of the normally naturally-occurring ones that aleady exist.
Okay, so you have basically made up your mind that their test protocols are deliberately biased to favour MIPS and therefore you don’t believe any of their helmet ratings and it must all be a marketing scam. That’s fine, but I’m not that cynical.
The way I use their ratings is to simply filter out all the lower rated helmets. There are now so many 5 star rated helmets to choose from at different price points that I think it makes no sense to look at any of the lower rated ones - unless you have a better source of independent crash testing which conflicts with these ratings.