Hats off to HEADS for safety research
New evidence is helping develop better helmet standards, but there is still more work to be done
HELMET research is paving the way to developing new improved “evidence-based” safety standards.
Researchers Tom Connor and Michio Clark are exploring equestrian safety hats as part of the HEADS project, a European initiative encompassing 13 research projects looking into different sports.
Mr Connor, a biomedical engineer working with University College Dublin and Charles Owen, spoke about the study’s progress at the British Equestrian Trade Association (BETA) Conference on 30 October.
“Concussion in sport has been well documented, particularly for American sports and cycling, but equestrian sport has always gone under the radar as far as the public are concerned, even though [riders] present with injuries far more regularly than a cyclist, for example,” he said.
“There has been little done on this so it’s important we start to understand what the accident scenarios are and how technology is working to reduce the risk of injury, death and concussion-type injuries [in riders].”
HELMET BOUNTY
THE researchers have been analysing helmets involved in accidents as part of the study.
The crash hats were collected through BETA, the Irish Turf Club and Charles Owen.
BETA has been working with retailers through the “helmet bounty scheme”, which has been run in conjunction with British Eventing, the British Horseracing Authority, British Riding Clubs and the Pony Club.
Medical officers at these events will offer riders who fall and are diagnosed with concussion the option for their helmets to be part of the scheme.
Consenting riders’ hats are
be taken for the research and vouchers issued towards the cost of new helmets from a BETA retailer. Riders also fill in accident forms with details of the type of event at which the fall took place, the surface and injuries suffered.
The team has been recording the extent and type of damage to donated hats, as well as carrying out laboratory tests on helmets that have never been involved in falls.
“Michou is involved in accident reconstruction, so he’s trying to take data from returned helmets, injury reports, video analysis and reconstruct that using multidynamic, mathematical models to see what are the likely brain injuries for those types of fall,” said Mr Connor.
“As the standards are at the moment, hats are all [tested on] rigid impacts,” said Mr Connor.
“At the next [laboratory test] stage we will test conforming surfaces, because many equestrian accidents occur on a soft surface.”
Mr Connor and Mr Clark have analysed more than 100 helmets and plan to collect more next summer, but some trends have already surfaced.
“We’re really getting a good picture of the types of accident we’re seeing in the real world,” said Mr Connor. “One of the interesting outcomes from the preliminary analysis is that
30% of concussion injuries had no damage to the helmet, which points to a large area of improvement achievable over the long term.
“It is still relatively early days in the analysis.”
IMPROVED HEADS
MR CONNOR has also developed a new headform, a fake “head” used for testing helmets.
“You [currently] have a headform which is not human-like, it’s a solid piece of magnesium and its mass is incorrect,” he said. “We’ve designed a new headform — effectively the first new prototype in 60 years. We’re evaluating this at the moment.”
Mr Connor said the study will help develop new and improved helmet safety standards, but more needs to be done.
“This work is only really starting,” he said. “All we’ve really done is set the groundwork for the really big studies in the future where we can look at thousands of cases, rather than just a couple of hundred.
“Any change to current standards will be evidence-based.”
BETA executive director Claire Williams said the association was “delighted” to be involved in the research through the hat amnesty.
“It helps us highlight the importance of replacing riding hats after serious impacts and allows us to access valuable research material,” she told H&H. “This enables people such as Tom Connor to carry out valuable work that will help develop and improve standards in the future.”