Helmet buyers commonly wonder what features they should look for in a helmet and whether spending more money buys more protection. This paper relies on laboratory impact attenuation test results from 1991 and 2005 to compare helmet price and standard certification. The laboratory tests compared a variety of full-facial helmets using the same impact test apparatus and procedures similar to those used for standards testing. However, each helmet was impacted only once at each location at drop heights that rangedfrom 6 to 10 feet (1.8 – 3.0 m), usually onto a flat anvil. The 1991 results showed that helmets certified to meet only FMVSS 218, the DOT standard (DOT-only), performed as well as those meeting both DOT and Snell (DOT+Snell) standards yet cost less than half as much. The 2005 test results showed that DOT-only helmets performed better than DOT+Snell helmets, again at less than half the price. Helmets certified to both DOT and a Europeanstandard (either BSI 6658, Type A or ECE 22-05) performed as well as DOT-only helmets in 2005 but cost, on average, more than five times as much. If these test results reasonably reflect crash performance, spending more money on a helmet may not buy added crash protection. In fact, in the case of Snell-certified helmets, higher cost was associated with worse performance, not better. Since no accident investigation research exists to show that helmets certified to one standard prevent death or brain injuries more effectively than helmets certified to another standard, it might be more favorable to helmet buyers if governments allowed the sale of helmets that meet any single one of a number of different national or international standards.
Samenvatting