Organisation
Imperial College London
Amount awarded
£91,073
Completed
2024
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre
9 October 2024
Researchers at Imperial College London have developed a simple new cycle helmet safety rating system with easy-to-understand scores from 0-5, designed to help buyers select which helmet to buy and assist manufacturers in future helmet design. The system is based on extensive new safety testing experiments on medium-sized helmets.
Testing on the UK’s 30 most popular helmets, funded by The Road Safety Trust, revealed significant differences in performance with no link between the price of a helmet and the level of safety it provides the wearer. So, for example, a helmet costing £130 did not perform better in tests than one costing £40.
People can check the rating of the adult cycle helmets tested to date on the helmet impact protection effectiveness rating (Hiper) website, and the team plan to add ratings for children’s helmets following further research.
Cycling offers a cost-effective and environmentally-friendly way to commute, a low-impact way to improve cardiovascular health, muscle strength and joint mobility, and can improve mental health.
Injuries and deaths from cycling have declined in recent years. However, cyclists remain vulnerable road users, and cycling accidents can be serious, with head injuries being one of the main causes of death and life-changing injuries for cyclists involved in collisions. Yet the costs and designs of helmets vary widely and until now there has been no objective ratings information about which helmets on sale in the UK offer cyclists the best protection.
To produce the ranking, the Imperial team tested 30 of the most popular adult helmets on the market, all medium sized, based on a combination of in-lab testing, data from major retailers, and a survey of more than 1,000 cyclists.
All cycle helmets sold, and therefore all helmets tested in this study, must have passed regulatory standards to ensure they offer protection.
Evidence from previous studies shows that head rotation is often associated with loss of consciousness and injuries deep in the brain that can be life-changing, for example triggering dementia.
The overall risk was calculated as an average of the linear and the rotational risk, which assumes they have equal importance and presence in real-world casualties. However the researchers say the weighting of these risks should be adjusted in future as more data emerges on the distribution of these injuries and their consequences.
The survey showed that a large proportion of the adult population of all genders wear medium helmets. The use of only medium-sized helmets in this study, which fitted the 57 cm circumference test headform, means that future work will test a wider range of helmet sizes to ensure equitable research.
The Road Safety Trust has extended its funding for three years so that the research team can apply their testing and rating techniques to children’s helmets as well as continuing to test the wide range of adult helmets available to buy.
Click on the link below to visit the new helmet rating website: