So with all these advances in technology, is a recent $200 bicycle helmet safer than your old one from the 1990s? If it doesn’t have new impact reducing technologies like MIPS, maybe, maybe not. There have been various safety standards at different times and places but there have been no real-world differences noted since the adoption of the ASTM standard in the late 1980s. No manufacturer is going to come out with a design that is marketed as “50% safer than brand “X”, for a number of reasons.
- The things that would make a helmet safer, namely thicker foam and fewer vents, would make it less marketable in other respects,
- This would expose them to potential liability, and
- The safety tests performed are go/no go tests; there’s no standardized tests to say a bicycle helmet exceeds them by X percent.
So the bottom line is there’s rarely a scientifically tested difference in helmets, so anything going forward needs to be taken into that context. If you research helmets online, soon you’ll find the “Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute”, (BHSI) in reality apparently a husband and wife team working out of their home out east that have been advocating for riding helmet use and laws since the the late 1980s. They make the following suggestions.
- Few Vents
- No visor
- Round, Smooth Shape
- White or Brightly Colored
There’s no actual studies and evidence for any of these, but at least we can discuss them and the last two do make some since. . The theory is that vents could allow branches and rocks to penetrate and lacerate your head, while a visor could shatter and lacerate your face and eyes. While it seems that manufacturers have gone hog wild with vents, I’ve tried out dozens of helmets and only noticed a difference in actual use on a few early ones that lacked adequate front vents- in normal riding the ones on the side and top don’t do a whole lot. I personally don’t like visors because if it’s low enough to do any good, it’s low enough to interfere with the sense of openness you feel on a bicycle. But feel the fear of them shattering is unfounded and they’re more likely to deflect branches away from your face.
The round, smooth shape bears further discussion. A significant downside to helmets is the bulk they add to your head can add significant torque to your head and neck in a crash (something MIPS is trying to mitigate). The BHSI claims, and it seems logical, that deviations from that can compound the problem by “catching” on the ground rather than sliding in the event of a crash. And having a full shell rather than exposed foam, or even worse, rubber, would seem superior too. The skate style would seem to be ideal for bicycling in this regard, although they tend to have vents in the top for skateboarding rather than the front and back for bicycling. And the trend in kid’s helmets to have a bunch of 3D rubber decorative objects stuck on would seem to me to not be a good idea.
Does having a bright, visible color make a difference for safety? On one hand In the UK they did a study on what they quaintly call “Smidsy” crashes– Sorry, Mate I Didn’t See You. It involved motorcyclists, but the same principles presumably apply to bicyclists. They found that even high-visibility clothing didn’t consistently improve visibility in a crowded urban environment. At city street speeds on crowded urban arterials the visual kaleidoscope can simply overwhelm the motorist’s senses to the point they won’t even see and process something as important as traffic signals – the trend to more, larger signals overhead is needed to overwhelm all the other visual clutter. A white bicycle helmet as opposed to black is just too subtle to make a difference here. On the other hand, a bright colored helmet couldn’t hurt, and might make a difference between being seen or not in less congested settings like crossing street on a trail in a suburb. My impression is that the trend towards blaze orange, flourescent blue, and neon yellow helmets does make riders more visible, moreso than even white.
When to Replace Your Bicycle Helmet
You also see suggestions that you need to replace your helmet every other year. Turns out that’s absolute hogwash. A recent study collected helmets from the general public dating back to 1987 and tested them and found no significant difference in the performance of the foam lining. And even the cheapest ones meet the same safety standards. At the same time, MIPS and similar rotational mitigation seem like a signficant advantage. So it’s probably worth upgrading to one of those if you don’t have one.
Helmets for Inline Skating
After some discussion, back in 1996 the ASTM, the agency that sets helmet standards, decided that the bicycle helmet standard, ASTM 1447, also applied to recreations roller skating. So any bicycle helmet you have will work just fine for that (although that didn’t stop manufactures from producing bicycle certified helmets marketed for “skating” during the peak of inline skatings popularity). Still, it’s worth mentioning that while inline skating you’re much more likely to fall backwards than on a bicycle, so a helmet with extra rear coverage might be worthile. These would be “mountain bike” and “skate style) helmets. A lot of inline skaters seem to prefer skate style helmets, which have the disadvantage of rarely having visors, and generally inline skating is harder work and slower speeds, so the lack of ventilation would seem to be a drawback.
Helmets for Sledding
Surprisingly despite the popularity of sledding, , there’s no standards for helmets, So the only option is to use a helmets developed for a different sport. The available helmets and their standards are:
Bicycle (CPSC)
Hockey (CSA Z262.1)
Skateboarding (ASTM F1492)
Snow (ASTM 1490)
Since there’s no standards and few studies, recommendations vary and even conflict. A sampling of recommendations:
For Sledding:
Bicycling: (Center for Injury Research and Policy)
Hockey or Snow (Parachute Canada), Ottawa Public Health
Bicycling, Skateboarding, Snow, or Speed Skating (Seattle Children’s Hospital) and the CPSC
Bicycling, Skateboarding, or Snow (Minneapolis Children’s Hospital)
So far there’s been a single study done, for sledding for childrend 7 under, in 2012, published by Dr. Michael Vassilyadi. Bicycle, hockey, and snow helmets and did not find a clear winner for all scenarios. As he puts it:
First of all, it’s important for children to wear helmets while they’re engaging in winter sports and this is something that was identified. The other thing that was identified was that there’s not one particularly good helmet. There are helmets out there which are satisfactory
Generally, hockey helmets performed better at lower speeds and bicycle helmets at higher speeds. Here’s a chart of the findings, with linear accelleration (in g) vs impact velocity. Smaller numbers are better and I’ve highlighted the best, worst, and middle findings in green, red, and yellow.
So, what to concluded from all this? First to state the obvious, any helmet is a lot better than no helmet. Beyond that, it’s concerning that hockey helmets performed the worst in both types of high speed impacts, the most likely to cause serious head injuries in sledding. I’ll also point out that bicycle helmets are designed to be worn during hot summer days (and it’s not a good idea to wear hats under them). And that while every kid needs a bicycle helmet, it may not be reasonable to expect parents to also provide them with a snow or hockey helmet just to go down to the park sledding or skating at the local rink.
For what it’s worth, the only helmet I’ve seen marketed for sledding, put out by one of the manufacturers of snow sleds, Flexible Flyer, is a CSPC approved bicycle helmet despite the ear pads, google straps, and lack of vents that make it look like a snow helmet.
Helmets for Ice Skating
As in sledding, there’s no helmet designed specifically for recreational ice skating. There is the ASTM-1849 standard for speed skaing, but it’s hard to assume a family on a frozen pond has the same kind of crashes an Olympic speed-skater does. And recommendations of a helmet to use vary.
For Ice Skating, the recommendations are:
Bicycling (Learn to Skate Blog)
Hockey : (Parachute Canada), Ottawa Public Health
Bicycling, Skateboarding, Snow, or Speed Skating (Seattle Children’s Hospital) and the (CSPC)
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