The correlation of damage to crash helmets with injury, and the implications for injury tolerance criteria.

By replicating the damage to the helmets of motorcyclists involved in accidents, the severity of impact can be established. Combining the clinical results of the accident with the impact severity allows the reliability of Head Injury Criterion (HIC) as an injury predictor to be investigated. Experimental data from the study reported here has been combined with comparable data from other researchers to indicate that there is a 8.5% probability of death at an HIC value of 1000, 31% at 2000 and 65% at 4000.