How Well Do Popular Bicycle Helmets Protect from Different Types of Head Injury? - Annals of Biomedical Engineering
Bicycle helmets are designed to protect against skull fractures and associated focal brain injuries, driven by helmet standards. Another type of head injury seen in injured cyclists is diffuse brain injuries, but little is known about the protection provided by bicycle helmets against these...
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"Below is a summary of the key findings:
- The least protective helmet had a 2.62 times higher overall head injury risk than the most protective helmet. There was a lesser spread of linear risk (1.76 times) compared to rotational risk (4.21 times).
- The pXR and pZR impact locations produced highest linear and rotational risks, respectively.
- The nine helmets offering the best overall injury protection were all equipped with the anti-rotation technology MIPS, which in direct helmet comparisons between models with MIPS and no-MIPS versions, was shown to be effective in reducing rotational kinematics and risk under the impact conditions tested. However, not all helmets equipped with MIPS were the most protective.
- Mass and price in isolation did not demonstrate a significant effect on exposure-weighted linear, rotational and overall risk, P(injury@helmet). However, the OLS model predicting non-exposure-weighted overall risk, P(injury@location), using price, mass, presence of MIPS and impact location showed that both price and mass had a small influence on the non-exposure-weighted overall risk, with increased mass and price shown to relate to increased non-exposure-weighted overall risk."
