The tech that’ll keep our heads safe
Why latest innovations will make crash helmets much better
Looking at a photograph of Freddie Spencer on the way to winning his first world championship in 1983 (below), you can see a lot has changed in the last 30-odd years. His helmet, however, doesn’t look a million miles away from what we have now. In fact, it isn’t. Helmets still follow the same formula as they did back then: hard shell, EPS liner, comfort padding. For all of our great leaps forward in safety with traction control, ABS and airbag suits, helmets have remained strangely static. But why, and what’s being done about it? Well to answer that, we have to go to Sweden.
Disappointing results
In the mid-90s Hans von Holst, a Swedish neurosurgeon noticed a lot of motorcyclists on his operating table. They had all been wearing helmets in their accidents and while the lids had protected their skulls, their brain tissue had been badly damaged. He was convinced more could be done, so he started working with engineer Peter Halldin to see if they could discover if it could be stopped. Incidentally, Hans has published 150 journals, reviews and books on the brain, tutored nine complete PhDs and was also Chairman of the World Health Organisation’s Collaborating Center on Neurotrauma for 17 years while also squeezing in 27 years as a neurosurgeon, so what he doesn’t know about brain injuries isn’t really worth knowing. What they found when they started researching motorcycle accidents was shocking. “We started looking at how you fall from a motorcycle and discovered that when you fall, you strike the ground at an angle but helmets are tested for straight impacts,” says Halldin. “In simple terms, motorcycle helmets are about 30 years behind car safety.”
Sticking points
A large part of why motorcycle helmets haven’t changed is because the legislation just isn’t there. Although the precise nature of the tests is different around the world, the general process involves dropping a helmet straight down onto an anvil. While this test is simple to replicate and cheap to do, it’s a long way from the reality of what happens in a typical crash. “We wanted to analyse how you could test for accidents in a more realistic way and then looked at how we could make something to prevent it,” says Halldin. To test helmets for rotation impacts, Halldin built a new testing rig that drops a helmet onto a 45 degree incline, which much more closely replicates the rotational forces of a crash. Working with a third scientist, Svein Kleiven, they began to build a Finite Element model of the brain. Working back from tests on real human brains, as well as reconstructed accidents and CT scans, they now have the ability to test a helmet, then see how much force would be transmitted to the brain from an impact. To date, they’ve done over 20,000 tests. They came to the conclusion the best way to protect the brain would be to replicate the way the fluid in the skull works, and create a slip plane that can redirect the energy, but uptake has been slow. “We first met with helmet manufacturers over a decade ago when no-one else was talking about rotational impact force,” adds Halldin. “Quite a few showed interested but when we presented them with the cost they backed out.”
In the cycling, snowsports and equestrian world, slip plane layers can be found in most helmets on the market but in motorcycling the rate of adoption has been frustratingly slow because the manufacturers are not as open to new ideas.
“There’s been no real will in the market for change. It’s taken us 20 years to get someone to put the product in a motorcycle road helmet.”
Crash, bang, wallop
Through their testing, Halldin and Holst found that there are various different forces transmitted to the brain in a crash.
“There are linear impacts and rotational,” says Holst. “If you have a linear impact, you will have a fracture and contusion. Conventional helmets are very good but often do not consider the rotational impact forces.”
A helmet is very effective at preventing skull fractures and
‘In simple terms, bike helmets are about 30 years behind car safety’
‘We could start to create helmets that are much safer’
associated injuries but often what does the most damage to the brain in an accident are sheering forces on the brain tissue from rotational impacts. When the brain is subject to a traumatic injury the proteins in the tissue uncouple, causing water to flood into the brain. This increases the pressure, rupturing cells and cutting off the blood supply, which starves the brain of oxygen. It only takes a force equal to roughly 12mph to start destroying the protein structure of the brain. Not only does this cause immediate problems but there’s huge potential for lasting damage.
Last year a study analysed over 160,000 head injuries and there’s an increased risk of Alzheimers, up to 80%, if you’ve had a severe head injury or repeated mild traumatic head injury (an injury resulting in unconsciousness or severe concussion). By creating their MIPS slip plane technology, Halldin and Holst think they’ve created something that could save lives and best of all, it only costs around £30.
Slip ‘n’ slide
So what exactly is MIPS? MIPS stands for Multi-directional Impact Protection System and in its simplest form, it’s a slip plane that allows your head to move inside the helmet in the event of an impact. The MIPS slip plane allows your head to move between 10-15mm in any direction at the point of impact, which can reduce the force transmitted to the brain by up to 40%. It does this by redirecting the rotational force instead of just sending it into the brain tissue. It’s important to note that MIPS are not the only people attempting this sort of work. “I’m sure there will be other solutions in the future and it’s important that other people do it,” says Halldin. “The problem today is that there is no standard for testing rotational motion. The only people doing it is the FIM but the bar they’ve set is quite low.”
As well as his work with the MIPS technology, Halldin also works with various bodies that help set safety standards. Right now they’re developing new standards for helmet safety that will require testing for rotational impact forces, but the wheels of government turn slowly and it will still be a couple of years before anything comes into effect. Longer term, Halldin hopes their work can raise standards everywhere and force firms to create new, safer products.
Tomorrow’s world
So are we still going to be saying the same thing in another 30 years? That helmets haven’t moved on again. Holst disagrees, in fact he thinks there are huge leaps to be made in helmet fit.
“When you’re young, there’s very little space between your brain and your skull. As you grow your brain grows, until you’re about 25. It begins to shrink again once you reach 45-50, which then opens up a gap between the brain and the skull, allowing your brain to crash into your skull in the event of an accident. This is one of the reasons it’s mad we just have S, M and L helmets.
“Within the next decade we should have scans to see how our brain fits within our skull, and helmets will be fitted based on that. A bit like we how we fit shoes now, much more individual. We could even reach a point there where your helmet is not like my helmet. There could be 15 sizes or more.”
The tests themselves could move on too, incorporating what’s now known about brain tissue damage. “Because the proteins are so abundant in the brain and we can see the effects on them easily, we could foresee a situation where helmets are evaluated not on their ability to resist forces in a lab, but on how the protein structure of the brain is affected during an impact. “Armed with this knowledge, we could start to create helmets that are much safer.”
Then there’s also the loopy next level stuff. Holst says that recent research has shown that sharks are able to open and close their protein structures, to alter the water content in their cells, allowing them to adjust to changing water pressure. It’s not impossible to imagine we could harness this within 20 years, giving us the ability to take a tablet that helps prevent brain injury in the same way we take an aspirin.