Helmet-Based Safety Leader Mips Welcomes Virginia Tech Helmet Lab’s Equestrian Helmet Ratings, But Warns Tests May Fall Short

2022-12-08, Stockholm, Sweden

The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab has just released their ratings of equestrian helmets, the first time to apply their STAR evaluation system to them. At Mips, we welcome the new benchmark initiative to evaluate equestrian helmets, yet aspects of the test and rating methods leave room for improvement.

Mips, which stands for Multi-directional Impact Protection System, provides the Mips® safety system, which is intended to help reduce harmful rotational motion that might be otherwise transferred to the user’s head for certain impacts.

After carefully evaluating the test method and ratings process, Mips believes that the STAR ratings system should adopt additional testing methods. Mips Co-Founder and Chief Science Officer Peter Halldin further explains below: 

• The Virginia Tech rating program conducts tests to the helmet that primarily include compression forces to the helmet, mimicking an accident situation where the rider falls straight towards the ground, a vertical velocity relative to the ground.
• However, even if rotational kinematics are measured, rotation is principally induced due to the head rotating around the neck, not at the first contact with the impacting surface.
• If a horse and its rider have a speed forward during their fall, there will be both vertical and horizontal velocity relative to the ground, and rotation could also be induced at the initial contact with the ground due to tangential force. To be able to replicate this phenomenon another test method is required.
• This could explain the discrepancy between Virginia Tech Helmet Lab’s ratings, and those from Swedish insurance company Folksam; for example, a helmet rated 1-star by Virginia Tech are rated 5-star by Folksam.
• The Folksam rating program includes impacts that have a tangential force acting on the helmet, which we suggest Virginia Tech implements to complement their current test method. 
• Additionally, the Virginia Tech rating system weights the front impact location and the lower impact velocity of 4.0 m/s higher than the impact velocity of 6.3 m/s. Therefore, the final rating of the helmets in the Virginia Tech rating program is more dependent on the performance of the front of the helmet and low velocity impacts.

While we appreciate the new initiatives to evaluate equestrian helmets and promote helmet safety more generally, we at Mips believe that the new rating systems may be cause for confusion.