comment attributed to Giro senior brand manager Don Palermini, listening to a helmet fall under the watchful eye of a technician.
this…occuring at Giro’s new office building in Scotts Valley. renovations to the new building included cutting a hole between the first and second floors to make room for a two-story drop rig for the helmet impact tests to meet federal safety standards. the Santa Cruz Sentinel reports about 13 thousand helmets broke during testing last year.
my.
They’re supposed to break, right? They break rather than your head. My helmet was smashed across the front like it was formed with a straight edge, and cracked along its length in several places. My head remained intact, but scrambled.
Am I missing something?
They’re supposed to break, right? They break rather than your head. My helmet was smashed across the front like it was formed with a straight edge, and cracked along its length in several places. My head remained intact, but scrambled.
Am I missing something?
Yes and no.
The tests for helmets are so far off base that it is just plain stupid to use the standards we use. The fact that a helmet can save your life is more the fact that they SLIP (now, they didnt always such as the ProTech Mirage and Specialized Sub6). What saves the most lives is the fact that the slick cover on the helmet will slide off and thus deflect an impact on your head (actually letting your shoulders and body take more of the impact). Bare skin (and expanded poly) can actually grip the road surface and other objects directing impact into your skull and spine with more force than allowing your noggin to slide away.
The tests - being static tests at 90deg angles are just silly…I would have to imagine that a very tiny as in one in billions of accidents even come close to a perpendicular impact of the skull with not yaw.
There might be parallels to motorcycle helmets.
The gold standard is snell something or other with the less strict ansi being frowned upon. But in a test a few years ago the $50 ansi helmets from auto-zone and wal-mart tested best…even beating out the whiz bang $500 helmets.
The reason being that the snell standard requires the helmet survive 2 hard impacts at the same location on the helmet. The theory being that in a high speed crash the helmet will potentially be subjected to multiple impacts.
The problem with this is that it makes the helmet more durable which will always have the unavoidable side effect of having it absorb less shock thereby passing it on to the brain.
There is a school of thought that the more stringent standards increase the likelihood of serious head injuries in those helmets versus the less stringent standards.
The fact that a helmet can save your life is more the fact that they SLIP (now, they didnt always such as the ProTech Mirage and Specialized Sub6).
Ah, the old Sub 6… What a great lid. I really wanted one of those back in the day… Sure it was later discovered that uncovered EPS could grip the pavement and lead to whiplash… But what other pro cyclist has ever had his MOM featured in an ad? 
(mini phinney doesn’t count - his mom was a rockstar on the bike too)
i don’t think you are missing anything.
i just couldn’t pass up a top helmet guy using that phrase in relation to his product.
all other angles aside, that just reached out…