Snell 2010 - At last they've given up on 300g

[p.dath]

Everything here is my personal opinion - of course.

I see that Snell have finally lowered the 300g "energy transfer to the brain" target - a force believed by many to be sufficient to cause a permanent brain injury.
http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-helmets/snell-2010-standard.htm

Snell, I see no point in making a helmet standard that requires a helmet to sustain a very hard double impact - an impact that I think you are pretty unlikely to suffer in real life on a typical road, and in doing so allowing up to 300g of force to be transferred into the brain.
Alas I believe you have done this because of market pressure - and not because of a desire to preserve the quality of life of those who use helmets certified to your "standard" who end up having accidents.

You see, having the absolute toughest helmet made from the hardest of materials is not the best answer for the ordinary every day road rider. Don't get me wrong, Snell definitely has it's place - but I believe an over-reliance has been placed on it, fooling a lot of average riders like me into a false sense of security.

Having a $1000 helmet is no guarantee of better protection than a $200 helmet.

So Snell, thank you for reducing these energy transfer limits. Sure you have only reduced it to 275g of force or so - and only because that is what large parts of the world require by law, and by not doing this you would miss out on sales - but regardless, thanks for this change, and for the countless brain injuries that now will not occur.

Yours sincerely,

Sarcastic bastard.
ps. http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/gearbox/motorcycle_helmet_review/index.html

[Lurch]

Interesting article, for those too lazy to read here's an interesting excerpt:


Conventional helmet-biz wisdom says fiberglass construction is somehow better at absorbing energy than plastic—something about the energy of the crash being used up in delaminating the shell. And that a stiffer shell lets a designer use softer foam inside—which might absorb energy better.

Our results showed the exact opposite—that plastic-shelled helmets actually performed better than fiberglass. In our big 3-meter hit—the high-energy kind of bash one might expect would show the supposed weaknesses of a plastic shell—the plastic helmets transferred an average of 20 fewer Gs compared with their fiberglass brothers, which were presumably designed by the same engineers to meet the same standards, and built in the same factories by the same people.