Table of Contents Pick a helmet using lab test data.
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COVID-19 and helmet cleaning
Helmets for 2020
Consumer Reports rates rotational energy management first criterion
Should I wear a helmet at all?
Scooter helmets
Rideshare company solves helmet problem
Snell Foundation finds no improvement from MIPS
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Quick Answers
- Quick Answers!
- Fast info for Frequently Asked Questions.
- Is there an anti-concussion helmet?
- Not really, and here is why.
- Buying a helmet?
- Our Buyer’s Guide to Bicycle Helmets
- Fake or counterfeit helmets
- How to avoid them.
- Helmets for 2020
- Our report on this year’s helmets.
- Cheap vs. Expensive Helmets
- Lab tests showed no difference in impact protection.
- Do shared bicycle rental users need helmets?
- Our advice on riding shared bikes.
- How to fit a helmet
- How to get all the protection you paid for.
- The Media Room
- Quote of the Day and how to quote our other text
- Helmets Made Simple
- If our pages seem too wordy, try this.
New Stuff
- Virginia Tech concussion rating system for bike helmets
- Could help you select your next helmet.
- New Trek/Bontrager models with WaveCel
- Trek says they provide more protection against concussion.
- Lawyer trying to organize one.
- Consumer Reports flunks three helmets
- Latest report posted on web site.
- We oppose Hövding airbag exemption from CPSC standard
- Product does not provide the protection required by the CPSC standard.
- Virginia Tech STAR ratings: the way ahead to better helmets
- Concussion ratings will push manufacturers to go beyond meeting standards.
- Pick a helmet with lab test ratings
- We found six highly rated by Virginia Tech and Consumer Reports
- Counterfeit helmet seller convicted
- Sold bogus helmets online.
- New Zealand radio distorts our comments
- “Don’t have much to protect” joke taken seriously out of contaxt.
- Louis Garneau Course recall
- The Course fails impact tests.
- Lazer recalls four helmets including the Blade
- Failed German tests
- New York Times gets it right!
- Columnist Jane Brody strongly recommends a helmet
- POC has an alternative to MIPS
- Interesting new development.
- Forbes: study blames helmets for risk compensation
- We disagree.
- Eco paper folding helmet is just a design so far
- Interesting concept.
- Air bag headgear again – Stanford research
- But some airbags do not inflate enough.
- SAHN recalls Classic skate style helmet
- Failed impact tests.
- Helmets do not increase jaw injuries!
- Study disqualifies itself.
- Consumer Reports has a helmet article
- Ratings for 34 helmets.
- Schwinn recalls toddler helmet
- Shell cracking where strap is riveted.
- Washington Post helmet myths article
- Got it wrong.
- Study blames bicycle helmets for risk compensation
- Imagine the consequences for seatbelt use if this were valid.
- European helmet study proposes changes in standards
- Recommends: lower pass/fail, more coverage, angular impact test for rotation.
- Helmets for electric bikes
- We don’t think a bike helmet is enough for an ebike.
- Folding helmets
- Needed for bike share programs, but must meet CPSC for US.
- Bicycling article is misleading
- Recommendations based on technology, not performance
- Bikeshare programs and helmets
- First study on helmet use.
- British Study on passing clearance.
- 2013 Re-analysis confirms our belief that data was misinterpreted.
- British Medical Journal poll opposes helmet laws
- Some believe requirement will reduce cycling in the UK.
- Danish iconoclast deplores helmets
- Video paints helmet promotion as evil.
- Should I wear a helmet?
- Would you believe our advice?
- Where can I report a helmet defect?
- CPSC has a place to post your problems.
- Free helmet offer is bogus!
- BHSI did not call you and offer helmets!
- Shared bicycle programs/cycle hire schemes.
- Rentals always pose helmet questions.
- NYU study does not expose hidden danger in foams.
- University PR department gets headline wrong.
- What’s New
- What we have added or modified recently.
Will there be a helmet class action lawsuit?
Helmets
- Helmets for the 2020 season
- Our report on helmets for this year.
- Where is the anti-concussion helmet?
- You can look for it…but you won’t find it.
- Cheap vs. Expensive Helmets
- Lab tests showed no difference in impact protection.
- Pulp Helmets
- Can a cheap, disposable helmet be made of pulp?
- Unusual head shapes.
- Difficulties finding helmets that fit.
- ASTM improves bicycle helmet standard
- ASTM adds variable mass headforms to F1447
- A visit to the CPSC helmet testing lab
- A photo tour of CPSC’s new helmet test facility.
- CPSC complaints database has a helmet case
- Case illustrates good and bad features of the database.
- Helmet recalls
- All CPSC helmet compliance actions since 1995.
- Types of helmets
- Road, mountain, downhill, skate, chrono
- Helmet terms and definitions
- Meanings for the helmet terms we use.
- Folding helmets
- Few folding models are available.
- Plastics in your helmet?
- Helmet plastics are probably not a cause for concern.
- Cardboard helmets?
- The Kranium’s designer attempts to break new ground.
- Are Ribcaps OK for cycling?
- They do not provide the protection you need.
- Cheap helmets!
- Sources of helmets for promotion campaigns.
- Yard sale helmets
- Should I buy a used helmet at a yard sale?
- Full Face helmets
- Do you want facial protection?
- Very large helmets
- Our advice for riders with very large heads.
- Small helmets for adults
- Advice on finding small adult helmets
- Very small helmets for children
- Why can’t I find a helmet small enough?
- Helmets for unusually-shaped heads
- Our advice for riders with unusually-shaped heads.
- Hairstyles and baseball caps
- Baseball caps, pony tails, beads, braids, “helmet hair”
- Do-rags and head covers under helmets
- Does a head cover affect helmet fit?
- One-size-fits-all helmets
- Can ring fit systems fit your head?
- Vents and squared-off lines
- You can have too many vents in your helmet!
- Visors: good and bad experience
- How to report shattered or snagged visors
- The helmet industry
- Industry news on a few of the manufacturers.
- Bell’s True Fit system is worth a look
- System simplifies the fitting process.
- How to Fit a Helmet
- How to fit a helmet for best protection.
- Helmet fit checklist
- Helmet fitting steps.
- Helmet size
- Size chart and how to measure your head for a helmet.
- Winter helmets
- Warm headgear for winter commuting and riding.
- Lights on Helmets
- Headlights and taillights mounted on helmets can be useful.
- Giving a helmet as a present.
- May not be a simple task.
- Reflective helmets
- Should you add reflective tape to your helmet?
- Stickers on helmets
- Should you add stickers to your helmet?
- Painting helmets
- Can you paint a helmet?
- Other helmets
- Ski, soccer, skating, equestrian and more.
- Multi-purpose helmets
- Can’t I just use the same helmet for everything?
- Helmets for motorbikes and scooters
- Why a bicycle helmet is not ok for motor vehicles.
- Crash stories
- Stories where the helmet worked.
- Other crashes
- Helmet, no helmet or non-bicycle. These are downers.
- When can I ride again?
- Ask your doctor before riding after a crash.
- Response to “truck ran over cyclist’s head”
- A helmet can help squirt the head out, but will crush if squarely run over.
- Helmet damage sensors and indicators.
- Most are not really concussion indicators.
Children
- Are helmets with animals or spikes OK for kids?
- Cute, but we don’t recommend them.
- Consumer Reports has a few ratings of Kid’s helmets.
- Most are rated Good for impact protection.
- Taking your baby along?
- Helmets, trailers, childseats and shaken babies.
- Very small toddler helmets
- Helmets for toddlers with very small heads.
- Very large toddler helmets
- Helmets for toddlers with very large heads.
- What size is my child’s head?
- How to measure.
- Getting My Child to Wear A Helmet
- Ten ideas for encouraging your kids to use helmets.
- Why kids don’t like to wear helmets.
- Reasons the kids give when asked.
- Warning: No helmets on playgrounds!
- Advice after deaths of two helmeted children.
- Helmets for poor kids
- Factors affecting promotion in poor neighborhoods
- Hairstyles and baseball caps
- Baseball caps, pony tails, beads, braids, “helmet hair”
- Lice! Head lice can be a problem
- Cleaning helmets for rentals and schools
- Kids in Dublin Ohio mount bike safety campaign.
- Lots of energy, new ideas as kids conduct their own program.
Special Helmets
- Helmets for teens
- “My teen won’t wear a helmet!”
- Helmets on campus
- Is a college brain worth protecting?
- Helmets for seniors
- Does an older brain need different protection?
- Helmets with Hearing Aids
- Where to put a hearing aid and how to deal with sweat
- Helmets for special needs
- Suggestions for developmental disabilities and seizures
- Helmets for head injured riders
- What to wear if you have a previous injury.
- Helmets for bald riders
- Avoiding tan lines and other tips.
- Thinner helmets for small adult heads?
- Feel like a mushroom?
- Helmets for police
- Helmets for police officers, with police graphics
- Helmets for bicycle polo
- What you need to protect your head in cycle polo
- Helmets for time trial use
- Chrono helmets with extreme aero shapes.
- Helmets for shared bicycle programs
- Cycle hire schemes pose particular helmet problems.
- Rental helmets
- Rentals need easy fit, sanitization and damage indicators
- Helmets and turbans
- How can a Sikh wear a bicycle helmet?
Standards
- Bicycle Helmet Standards
- Our quick summary of bike helmet standards.
- Standards for bicycle helmets
- The long version: ASTM, ANSI, Snell, CPSC, CEN and others.
- Short helmet standard comparison chart
- The short standards comparison chart.
- Detailed Standards Comparison
- Longer, detailed item-by-item comparison.
- ASTM F1952 Downhill Mountain Bike Racing Standard
- Comparison with CPSC standard.
- Test Line Comparisons
- CPSC, ASTM, Snell, Dutch
- The ideal helmet standard
- Our idea of the perfect bicycle helmet standard.
- Making progress in standards
- What is needed for further standards improvement.
- ASTM improves bicycle helmet standard
- ASTM adds variable mass headforms to F1447
- Helmet performance limits
- How much a helmet can take and keep on protecting.
- Helmet testing
- How helmets are tested in the lab.
- Helmet test labs
- Labs who test helmets or supply test equipment.
- ASTM headgear subcommittee
- Standards, meetings, background
- ANSI Z90.4 Committee – Disbanded
- ANSI replaced the Z90.4 standard with ASTM F1447
Maintenance and Repairs
- Testing products that can attack helmets
- BHSI has tested hair products, sunscreens, repellants.
- How to inspect a helmet
- The points to check, and a checklist.
- Replacing a helmet
- Our advice on when to replace your helmet.
- Repairing a helmet
- How to fix your helmet when it comes unglued.
- Replacing a buckle
- Can you find a replacement buckle? Maybe!
- Threading straps through a buckle
- Illustrations and photos to help you rethread.
- Recycling helmets
- What to do with your faithful old helmet.
Construction and Design
- How Helmets Work
- Basics on construction and testing standards
- How bicycle helmets are made
- A summary of manufacturing steps
- Bicycle helmet impact liners
- Info on EPS, EPP, EPU foams and more types of liners.
- Molded-in-the-shell helmets
- It can make better helmets, but not necessarily.
- Buckles
- Most are one basic design, but there are others.
- Sliding resistance and MIPS
- Rounder helmets help you slide on impact
- Helmet Cooling
- Info on ventilation and cooler riding.
- Helmet Designers
- Our short list of independent helmet designers.
Statistics and Research
- Helmet and Injury statistics
- They don’t agree, so take your pick!
- New York City data on bicycle deaths
- NYC found 97% of dead cyclists had no helmet.
- Journal articles and Studies on helmets
- Links to scientific journal articles and studies on helmets.
- Helmet documents
- Materials we have scanned in or downloaded.
- Helmet construction and materials
- Helmet design for students and researchers.
- Researchers’ page
- Info for a thesis or a science project.
- Designers’ page
- Info for a helmet design project.
- Term papers on bike helmets
- Where to find the info to write a term paper
- A workshop on bike helmets
- Points to cover when you do a workshop.
- Helmet Patents
- Some significant patents and how to find others.
- Advice for Inventors
- We are interested in new helmet technology.
- The cost of making a bike helmet
- Our guesses on manufacturing and sales costs.
- The total market for bike helmets
- How many helmets are sold each year?
Helmet Laws
- Mandatory helmet laws
- States, counties, cities, positions, opponents.
- Studies on mandatory helmet laws
- Journal articles and studies on helmet law effectiveness.
- Australian paper on helmet laws is misleading
- Helmet laws normally do not reduce cycling here.
- Issues from the “helmet
wars” - Our slant on the endless helmet law arguments.
- Importing bicycle helmets to the US
- Just a start on the regulations that apply for importing bike helmets.
Media
- The Media Room
- Quote of the Day and how to quote our other text
- Washington Post article based on faulty study.
- Reporters can’t find a real helmet issue, so . . .
- Misguided media articles and ads without helmets
- What we do when we see one of those.
- New York Times Article
- “Head Injuries Piling Up?” Times’ reputation sinking?
- NYU study does not expose hidden danger in foams.
- Another university PR department gets headline wrong.
- Our email newsletter
- Helmet news, not too frequent, you can subscribe.
Who We Are
- Welcome! We are a helmet advocacy program founded in 1989. We are a small, active, non-profit consumer-funded program providing bicycle helmet information. We are a 501(c)3 non-profit, so your contributions to us are tax-deductible. We try to explain the technology of helmets to consumers, and promote better helmets by working on improved standards. In a typical year our secure server serves 2 million pages to more than 700,000 distinct users. Our volunteers serve on the ASTM helmet standards committee and are active in commenting on actions of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. We are members of the National Bicycle Safety Network. We provide a Toolkit of materials for helmet programs and a periodic email helmet newsletter, both free. We are all volunteers, funded entirely by consumer donations. We maintain our independence by never accepting funds from the industry. As much as we believe in helmets we still consider them a secondary safety measure and urge that primary measures such as safer roads and education programs for riders and drivers not be neglected.
Our volunteers always work in home offices and BHSI is fully functioning despite COVID-19 restrictions.
- Our FAQ: can you trust this site?
- Where we came from, what we do and how.
- Some nice words from the Consumer Reports blog.
- BHSI’s founder named Safety Crusader.
- Swart receives ASTM’s Hulse Memorial Award
- Recognition for BHSI’s work on helmet standards.
- Swart receives ASTM’s Award of Merit
- Highest ASTM award for standards committee work.
Photo, Swart on right.. - Our Program
- What we hope to accomplish this year.
- How to support our work!
- We are funded 100% by consumer donations.
- What we need today
- Graphics, crossword or teaching skills?
- How we run our secure site
- Our philosophy, design, page hits and more.
- Promises, promises
- What we hope to add to our site some day.
- How to cite our pages
- Citing us in footnotes for scholarly papers.
What we can do for you
- Our publications
- Newsletter, pamphlets, list of laws, more.
- Our email newsletter
- The Helmet Update, our periodic free newsletter.
- Media guidance
- Quotes and a few rules on quoting our site.
- Webmaster guidance
- You can quote us but not borrow our pages.
- Link policy
- We post only a few focused links.
- Access to our data
- Web, email, telephone, postal mail.
- Teachers, educators, scout leaders, workshops, rodeos.
- Resources, statistics, pamphlets, videos, lesson plans.
- Bike shop owners – We encourage you to use our pamphlets.
- We provide free duplicating masters.
Search our Site
- Search our site.
- Finds anything on our site.
- A Map of our site.
- A page by page map in outline form.
Links
- Helmet links
- Links to other helmet-related pages.
- Head Injury Survivors
- Links to people who have survived a head injury.
- Graphical pages for young riders
- Want graphics? Comics? Superheroes?
- Our links policy
- We keep our links closely focused on helmets.
Translate Our Pages
Feedback
- Problems With Our Site?
- Here is a page of tips on problems.
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- Here is how a spoofer sent you that message.
Virus-bearing messages do not originate here! We never send anything to anyone from “info@helmets”.
- Sending us an email:
- Please use this link for comments or questions
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- You can donate to support our work:
- Please use this link
We are consumer-funded and do not accept donations from the industry, including bicycle shops.
- Our contact info:
- Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute
4611 Seventh Street South
Arlington, VA 22204-1419 USA
Voicemail: 703-486-0100
Email
Web: helmets.org
© All pages on this site are copyrighted by the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, 1995-2020. Reproduction for non-profit use is encouraged, but on the Web please link to our pages rather than reproducing them–we update frequently and a copy will be quickly outdated. Webmasters please see this page.
At least one page on this site was revised on April 4, 2020.