Drop tests from as high as two meters show that an air bag bike helmet may reduce impact by as much as six-fold compared to traditional helmets.
Bioengineer David Camarillo has had two concussions as the result of bicycling accidents. While he doesn’t doubt that wearing a helmet is better than no helmet at all, Camarillo thinks that traditional helmets don’t protect riders as well as they could.
“Foam bike helmets can and have been proven to reduce the likelihood of skull fracture and other, more severe brain injury,” says Camarillo, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. “But, I think many falsely believe that a bike helmet is there to protect against a concussion. That’s not true.”
Knowing what he does about traditional bike helmets, Camarillo, whose lab works on understanding and preventing concussion, decided to test a new type of helmet that is starting to be available in some European countries. The results appear in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering.
The helmet Camarillo tested comes in a soft pocket worn around the neck. It pops up, like an air bag, around a person’s head when it senses a potential collision. It was originally designed to address the fact that people don’t like to wear helmets for aesthetic reasons. The researchers compared this air bag helmet directly to traditional foam bike helmets. Their results were striking.
