It really doesn't matter whether or not they receive donations and money from the helmet industry. In itself there's nothing wrong with that. I don't really even care if that somehow prioritizes which products get reviewed first or next.

The crux of my issue with the entire setup is their testing itself, and I've laid out what issues I see with their methodology back in POST 25. Their test protocols are available to anyone. The fact that their test equipment lacks actual human characteristics is also obvious. What is unknown is whether their omitted characteristics matter to actual helmet safety. I can't prove that these factors matter, but intellectually I think they could. I also cannot find anybody that has provided any rationale or scientific support as to why those factors do not matter. So you can call my concerns BS if you like, but there's neither proof nor disproof that my concerns are relevant.

Here's a little exercise anyone can perform right now. Take 3 fingers, line them and push on your forehead about where a cycling helmet cage would be. Then move around -- see how you can move up/down/left or right, or in little circles. This simple phenomenon is not replicated by any test that I can determine.

So my claim is basically that I believe the VaTech's cycling helmet reviews have become the industry's de facto standard, but perhaps undeservedly so. The marketplace accepts their rankings because they're the only game in town. Their test platform could be inherently favoring MIPS (and alternatives such as the revolutionary Wavecel) results, and likely be a large contributor to MIPS taking off commercially. MIPS in itself, generally, adds cost, weight, and decreases ventilation vs helmet designs that don't include MIPS. I'd prefer there to be more substantiated evidence that these tradeoffs are definitely worth it for the real amount of increased safety. I do imagine that the reason these factors aren't tested is that it's prohibitive to do so -- requiring much more elaborate headform constructions, and if you even could get one of these made with a sliding exterior layer (like a scalp or with hair), that in testing these will wear out and be consumed fairly quickly -- being unusable for continued and multiple repetitive testing.