this is a Specialized Tactic 4 mountain bike helmet and it retails for about $110 believe
it or not that puts it on the lower end of the price Spectrum for helmets from major brands
now this is a very good helmet it's got great ventilation it's lightweight when I put it on
I see no part of the helmet in my field of view just a really good comfortable helmet overall
but so is this helmet from 'Bikeroo' this was $25 on amazon.com at one point I think it was on sale
for $20 and kind of ticks all the boxes this is actually very comfortable very lightweight
it looks really good and it even has a cool name what's more this meets all CPSC guidelines that's
the Consumer Product Safety Commission here in the United States but would you wear this
helmet and go mountain biking? would you put it on your mother's head? would you put it on your
child's head? and for that matter how do we know this Specialized Tactic 4 is as safe as they say
it is? because it's got a Specialized logo on it? well we wanted to find the answer to that
question and so we drove 4 hours to Virginia Tech to visit their helmet testing lab where
helmets undergo a battery of tests to determine their Star Score although more yellow stars are
a better rating much like a restaurant or a product a lower Star Score means a lower risk
of concussion to determine the Star Score of our Bikeroo helmet I hand delivered five identical
samples to undergo the same testing procedures as hundreds of bicycle helmets ranging from $30 to
beyond $300 and so let's start with the question why should we trust Virginia Tech's helmet testing
ab in 2011 Virginia Tech began testing football helmets in an effort to increase safety on their
own playing field and it actually worked their tests were so effective that the industry began
using their tests as a sort of benchmark and players are now safer because of it there was
only one five-star helmet and now you can't buy anything but a five star helmet back in my day we
had lap seat belts and you didn't even wear those most time then they had shoulder straps right
it's an evolution of safety same thing with the helmet industry and so Virginia Tech developed new
testing procedures and they expanded their helmet testing program to include other activities like
road and mountain biking for each of these sports there's a completely different impact test and a
different risk function that determines the Star Score so let's talk a little bit about these star
ratings on their website Virginia Tech publicly features the results from hundreds of road and
mountain bike helmets with our Specialized Tactic 4 coming in third place for cycling overall and
first place for mountain biking that's why it's the helmet I'm holding right now with a star score
of 8.55 your risk of concussion with this helmet is lower than with a helmet that has a higher star
rating of the 72 mountain bike helmets currently on the list the top 25 helmets all have a rating
lower than 12 but the lowest ranking helmet which I actually owned at one time scored a
24.98 and got two stars and at that lower end of the spectrum there's no shortage of helmets that
cost over $100 but at the bottom of the list there are quite a few inexpensive helmets more than the
top of the list if we look at the best ranked helmets the top 25 there's only one that costs
below $100 and that's the Scott Argo Plus Mips that Scott Argo costs $80 and scores an 11.6 which
is impressive but as of right now any mountain bike helmet with a star score of lower than 14 is
considered very safe and in that range we actually have quite a few budget options like this Laser
Chiru Mips which costs $55 and scores a 13 of course there are other factors that determine
the cost of your helmet like comfort fit weight styling and aerodynamics but from the standpoint
of safety looks like $55 is enough we almost exclusively for our star ratings use this this
is a NOCSAE head form National Operating Committee for the Standards of Athletic Equipment we think
this is the most biofidelic and it's designed for sport helmets our sensor package slides into the
this little channel here right next to the CG and then we can mount this head form on whatever test
rig we want and do our head impacts and then do our analysis any activity where you have a
lot of horizontal velocity you probably hit your head at some sort of an angle so this is what we
call an oblique impact test Dr Barry Miller gave us a tour of Virginia Tech's helmet lab and even
demonstrated how these tests are done on their oblique impact tester you know the bike helmet
industry probably has more helmets than any other industry you know football hockey etc and it's the
most most tedious of all of our processes we use a head form that sits on a halo and the halo goes
around the anvil but you have to get the helmet in the right position X Y and Z and again there's
six locations two energy levels two trials so it's a total of 24 tests minimum probably in the area
of 5 to 6 hours and so it really measures you know those rapid head movements both linearly
peak linear acceleration and the rotational acceleration or velocity as your brain tries
to maintain its position inside the skull those rapid head movements are putting pressure strain
on you know the brain tissue yeah the helmets that better reduce those peak numbers reduce
concussion risk so you don't want these rapid head movements now while certain Technologies like Mips
can reduce the risk of concussion I started to realize really early on an our tour that
there's only one surefire way to make a helmet safer add more padding and so it's no surprise
that football helmets are vastly more resistant to impact than bicycle helmets in fact bicycle
helmets are single impact you crash once and you have to get a new helmet football helmets incur
multiple crashes per day and so there's a lot of padding in there and they're actually quite
expensive and so I decided to ask Dr. Miller how a football helmet might fare in a bike crash if
you were to take a while of guess how do you think a a football helmet would fare in a bicycle crash
I think it would do very well extremely well but while on football you might smack your head every
single game a bicyclist might only smack their head once in their life if at all and so bicycle
helmet manufacturers go to great lengths to try and make their helmet safer without just throwing
more padding at them oh I see see that so they kind of smear then some are deformed linearly but
some are kind of twisted and bent to the side and so that's kind of the rotational mitigating part
now as I questioned the staff at Virginia Tech they gave me very measured responses especially
when they weren't 100% sure about something they were really really clear about the fact that all
these tests have to take place for them to learn anything you can't just drop a helmet and look at
it and say that would fare well or that wouldn't everything has to be done just so and so I was
really surprised to get a relatively straight answer when I asked them about action cameras
and how they affect helmet safety I'd probably say it might be minimal it kind of depends on its
level of attachment and like how how rigidly attached it is to the to the helmet we have
to keep in mind that these impacts are very very fast as you saw in some of the data so what would
be perceived as a very wildly different impact is really just only 10 milliseconds where that whole
impact response is affected so as long as that's not wildly different you should be fine this is
not a conclusive result this was just kind of a gut reaction to the question and it makes me
feel a little bit better about riding around with a camera on my helmet I also needed some
clarification on their methodology as I mentioned bicycle helmets are single impact and so one crash
the helmets done yet Virginia Tech tests the same helmet multiple times for each helmet model we use
five different samples of the same helmet model and our locations are spread far enough apart
that we don't get any deformation that plays a role a different location impact and so we
use six locations and two energy levels and we do two trials per test condition so that's what
requires us to use four helmets and we usually ask for a fifth just because often times we need
to retest a particular location for some reason these impact tests are very precise they know
exactly where the helmet is going to be impacted now this doesn't work in a real life crash because
you can't plan what part of the helmet is going to impact the ground but apparently only the
part of the helmet that was actually impacted is affected this is kind of as good as It gets it's a
completely independent helmet testing lab and in fact Virginia Tech allows you to put a badge on
your helmet showing that it has been tested what do you guys charge for that so so it's a no fee
licensing agreement if a company signs a licensing agreement they're free to use our Virginia Tech
logos with compatible helmets rated on the web page and so if you're watching this video now
Bikeroo you can now put that badge on the box that your helmet comes in because this now has a star
rating and surprisingly this $25 helmet scored better than much more expensive helmets from
companies like Giro, Troy Lee, Smith, and Endura they're all more expensive and one is even over
$200 the Bikeroo helmet scored a 16.18 that's suboptimal but it's still not bad it's safer
than a lot of helmets on the list and as I said much safer than some helmets I've owned I've owned
a helmet with a score of 24 and the helmets that were the best in their tests scored around 8 and
so technically this is not a bad helmet especially for $25 but when it's your brain we're talking
about and you can get a top rated one for 55 I'd rather spend that extra money but uh I've ridden
helmets that aren't as safe as this and so we have these helmet ratings as a resource so let's say
you look through there and you buy a helmet that has a really good star rating is that going to
lower your risk of concussion well of course it depends on what you're doing on a bike but when
compared to other helmets the answer is yes if you get the helmet you are actually intending
on getting what do I mean by that? do you notice anything strange about these two helmets in front
of me you probably don't because they look pretty much identical except this is a $300 helmet with
a really really good rating and this—they probably try to sell for $300 but it's actually counterfeit
this actually hurts what I'm about to do um this is a $300 helmet but I guess stomp hard
[Music]
helmets are supposed to kind of break if they're impacted hard enough there
is a major crack in here there's a huge indentation on the top of the helmet but
that's kind of like a crumple zone would be in a car and here is a Specialized Prevail
2 counterfeit edition let's see how it performs in the stomp test [Music]
I was expecting it to like indent more or something oh my [Music] God they're
actually killing people so now I'm wondering this is another helmet I got on Amazon but this is not
a counterfeit it's a unique helmet it's made by team obsidian super cheap I think this was under
$20 and it's CPSC certified or at least it says it is what happens if I stomp on this let me stomp
it again give it a good hard stomp yeah like if you're going to counterfeit a helmet helmet like
why kill people this is a cheap cheap cheap helmet it's like as cheap as you can get um but it looks
like it would actually protect your head so this went from a fun video about helmet safety to a
video about murderers basically so how do you know you're getting a legitimate helmet well first of
all this is a $300 helmet with a carbon fiber mesh everybody is trying to counterfeit this nobody's
trying to counterfeit $50 helmets and $40 helmets or at least they'd be pretty stupid to do that
different companies around the cycling industry have done all sorts of secret shopper exercises
at bike shops and almost never do you find a counterfeit helmet at a bike shop in the United
States Amazon and AliExpress.. I got the Bikeroo helmet there and I got this one there they don't
want to sell counterfeit goods it harms them but uh they can't can't really police all of it so if
you want to be really really sure you're getting a good name brand helmet go to like Backcountry
or Jensen one of the major brands that's actually a dealer or if you are going to get a helmet on
Amazon make sure that the seller is the actual company that you're getting it from don't get
a helmet from a third party especially not a helmet from a third party unless you can verify
that they're an authorized reseller for that brand now if you watch this channel you know
it's a huge priority of mine to get kids on bikes and so it was music to my ears when Dr. Miller
told me they have plans to start testing youth helmets if you have the means to donate to such
a cause I left a link in the description and of course make sure you write bicycling in there cuz
they test a lot of different types of helmets and we can actually do a lot of good and make helmets
safer for the riders of tomorrow and so thank you to Virginia Tech for being such a gracious host
giving us a tour of your helmet testing lab and testing our Bikeroo Helmet if you are interested
in this old Bikeroo helmet I left a link below I also left some links to some other options that
I believe give you a good mixture of value and safety I hope this video was informative I hope
it makes a whole bunch of you safer I hope you learned something and if not I hope you at least
found it entertaining thanks for riding with me today and I'll see you next time. I wrote
this article about why experts have a difficult time getting through to beginners this article
and many other articles written by some of the most interesting voices in mountain biking are
available on my Substack not only that but you'll get the video you just watched 2 weeks early with
no ads get interesting articles ad-free early videos discussions and help me break free from
the algorithm on Substack. for maximum protection properly to the head this properly to the Head
per enclosed snug and yeah if you read this it would have been pretty obvious this wasn't
the real thing they have a phone number on it I wonder what happens if you dial this phone number