You don't need MIPS....

It’s a bit early for biscuits, but I have some on standby…

At least TJ's back home now so we don't have to worry about his phone running out of battery 😉

As is traditional, I'm wading in without reading the link or any other evidence/opinion:

Unless you superglue the inside of the helmet to your head, it seems to me that simple slippage is probably a bigger component that MIPS

One huge flaw in Kask’s approach: it assumes a full head of hair for maximum benefit 🙂

Yeah, a company that doesn't like mips devises a test that shows that if you have a good head of hair mips might not be that beneficial.

So about 90% of the blokes on this forum could still benefit from mips then!!

I don't have mips in any of my helmets, am bald and still alive.....

“There has been some confusion where a helmet without a specific anti-rotational technology is defined as an unsafe helmet,”

Maybe less safe not unsafe, somebody at Kask sounds a little defensive.

Kask is very explicitly saying that any headform that doesn’t mimic a human head’s natural shear layer will artificially amplify the effects of a supplemental shear layer.

I have a no.3 all over, so some shear there but barely any scalp movement, none of any use there. The forms need to take account of natural variation or eliminate it completely for the test results to be meaningful for comparisons. Maybe the standard 'tacky' headform is the best approach to eliminate natural variation (like ones man-bun catching on the inside of the helmet in an accident).

Having an extra shear layer is unlikely to do any harm, not having it may cause harm in specific instances.

Having an extra shear layer is unlikely to do any harm, not having it may cause harm in specific instances.

That’s what I took from the article

So grow your hair or MIPS then.

I struggle with MIPS for night riding. Makes the light jiggle about a lot more than a non-MIPS helmet.
Ended up with a second, cheaper helmet with a permanently attached hope mount for night riding.

So grow your hair or MIPS then.

No Sudocreme suggested?

Anyone remember that Trek? Marketing a few years back, over the course of a few months, print and digital, heralding the best cycling invention ever. Turned out to be a new helmet design. Not heard a word about it since.

The best safety equipment every designed is the car 3point seat belt, only because Volvo made it patent free. If MIPS was patent free I bet every helmet manufacturer would adopt it.

This story has really strong Chris King headset vibes to it.

Having an extra shear layer is unlikely to do any harm, not having it may cause harm in specific instances.

That’s what I took from the article

Same here. I'm happy with my MIPS helmet, doesn't move around much even with a light on top and if it gives better protection in certain crashes but doesn't make others worse then it's fine in my book. Knowing my luck even though I crash very rarely when I do it'll be a big one and most likely one where the MIPS will be beneficial, especially if I'm wearing a helmet without it!

I've always thought MIPS to be a bit pointless in trail/xc lids.
I can see it's use in an FF helmets that has a much more secure fit. but no matter how good a fit a trail helmet is there's always a bit of movement.
Even so all my trail lids still have MIPS or a variation of it as it's difficult to buy a good helmet without it these days.
In my unscientific test I've just conducted while sat here my baldy head skin moves a similar amount to the MIPs on my TroyLee lid. 😉

Anyone remember that Trek? Marketing a few years back, over the course of a few months, print and digital, heralding the best cycling invention ever. Turned out to be a new helmet design.

Is the 'Wavecel' stuff which like Koroyd straw things is just, well, a bit crap by blocking airflow, easy damaged etc?

Is the ‘Wavecel’ stuff which like Koroyd straw things is just, well, a bit crap by blocking airflow, easy damaged etc?

Having been riding a Smith helmet for the past two years it's not majorly over warm even with a buff under it even in the height of summer and as for fragile? mines not damaged in the slightest.

I have wondered whether wearing a buff under the helmet whether it affects the MIPS.

my baldy head skin moves a similar amount to the MIPs on my TroyLee lid

Does that mean that MIPS extends the range of movement in a rotational impact?

I've always been really dubious about MIPS for just the reasons they set out, and the MIPS helmets I've had were definitely less comfortable (though the Giro Spherical stuff seems to deal with that, at a high price).

I'd be far more interested in something that actually gave a higher degree of impact protection - is there really nothing better than a lump of polystyrene? What about the Koroyd stuff Smith uses? Are Bern's 'hard hat' Brock foam helmets actually more useful in real world use? https://www.absolute-snow.co.uk/buying-guides/the-absolute-guide-to-bern-helmet-constructions. (How much damage do our hard foam helmets suffer from bouncing around in the back of the car for a few years).

Maybe the current tests/standards do deliver the best combination of cost/protection/weight but it does seem odd that there hasn't really been any substantial advances since the cycle helmet standards were originally defined,.

So grow your hair or MIPS then.

So you're discounting a wig as a solution?

Presumably though the little mounts of the MIPS system are designed to articulate under load, whereas your hair/scalp pressed up against the inside of the helmet would wobble more normally but bind up when a load was applied?

I struggle with MIPS for night riding. Makes the light jiggle about a lot more than a non-MIPS helmet.

I took all the mounting hardware off my helmet light, put some clingfilm over my helmet and pressed the lamp body into some epoxy putty (the stuff that comes in a "sausage roll" of epoxy and hardener at B&Q). Mounted as far back as possible so it's as close to your head/neck joint which is the fulcrum. It no longer wobbles and its weight is barely noticeable as it's probably an inch closer to my head than the mount put it.

The testing they used suffers from the same thing as almost every other bit of testing used for cycle helmets - its pure crap. A headform not a whole body and no attempt to look at what happens in real accidents. The best bit of research I have seen on this topic used full body dummies and threw them at things from various angles. they found increased rotational forces with helmets in 30% of all cases.

MIps tech however adds weight which is not good and puts a hard layer in the helmet which again is not good

The best bit of research I have seen on this topic used full body dummies and threw them at things from various angles. they found increased rotational forces with helmets in 30% of all cases.

You got a link to that, TJ? Be very interested to read.

I've just bought a Fox helmet with MIPS (SportPursuit bargain) to replace a Kask helmet without MIPS. Only difference is the MIPS makes a noise! Squeaky/rattly type noise when riding on a quiet trail is quite annoying. Added protection? meh.

It's interesting to me (as an established MIPS - and other shear force helmet technology - advocate) that they don't mention whether MIPS performs as well (or even *gasp* better) than KASK on its WG11 test. Surely if you're coming out fighting then you need to show the data against the other side?

Without reading all of the surrounding data - I actually have a job to do! - the article also only mentions 'superficial' brain damage - whatever that means. Current thinking suggests that many concussion symptoms might be explained by perturbations in the corpus collosum, a massive wedge of nerve fibres which effectively holds the two hemispheres together, and is responsible for integrating their functions. This is not a superficial structure.

More reading necessary, obvs. But I'm all for better and more testing.

Barney. cyclehelmets.org Take your skepticism with you. I can't see the particular paper now

Well, that's - uh - *quite* the easy-to-read website 🙂 Couldn't find much/anything in there less than decade old, and I can't find the paper in there either. 🤷 Thanks tho!

@sandwich - if they have a man-bun then they deserve everything they get!! 😜

Also Grade 3? You long haired hippy

@tjagain

MIps tech however adds weight which is not good and puts a hard layer in the helmet which again is not good

The MIPs I've seen are a thin enough sheet of flexible plastic that I really can't see that it would be a negative, and adds negligible weight. No-one has ever marketed lightweight helmets as being 'safer' - just more comfortable.

I'm skeptical on both sides of it tbh. It wouldn't be the first time helmet testing led development down a road that looked good on paper but really was created by the test itself. Just look at the history of motorbike helmet, EN vs Snell and then the well-intentioned counterproductivity of SHARP that ended up largely testing exactly where your vents are, and forcing manufacturers to move strength away from critical points and into bits that real world analysis showed rarely take damage.

Helmet tests are definitely very synthetic. It's only to be expected, as soon as you want high reproducability you tend to develop a test that's great in the lab but maybe not so realistic. Unnatural headforms are a part of that, the thing you hit it with is another.

(TJ's dummy tests aren't that compelling either btw- we're not ragdolls, we don't crash like that. I suspect we should be doing these tests with reanimated corpses)

but whether Kask are more right than MIPS, who knows? But their argument seems pretty sound- you can feel the movement in your hair and scalp yourself. If testing has shown that's a thing we need, and then MIPS has basically recreated what we already have, that's a pretty easy conclusion to have reached with best intentions. If it's better than what we already have, that's great, if it adds nothing but has no downsides that's fine... But everything in a helmet adds either bulk or weight and it's all on a pretty strict budget. Big helmets hit more things and rotate more, heavy helmets increase dwell time, it's unavoidable.

In the end I think most bike helmet testing is shit tbf. The CE testing is so old and so basic. If we put the budget invested in changing colourschemes annually and churning Exciting New Tech, into really good helmet testing and certification ther's a good chance we'd save more lives and brain cells than we do with MIPS etc. But what a good test looks like, is not so simple.

(like, yay for dh helmet testing! But then let's fudge it so that it can also do openfaces. So now a helmet with a somewhat-protective chinpiece fails, while a helmet with the exact same overall safety except no chinpiece at all passes)

And then it goes out in the wild and suddenly helmet fit is a huge factor too. Or you cut your hair. Or the pads shrink over the years. or the most protective helmet in the world makes you sweat too much so you don't wear it or you overheat and lose concentration and crash more. It's all science, but it's not the sort you can easily put in a lab

scaredypants
Full Member

As is traditional, I’m wading in without reading the link or any other evidence/opinion:

Unless you superglue the inside of the helmet to your head, it seems to me that simple slippage is probably a bigger component that MIPS

That's more or less the thrust of their argument.

All i know is i’ve had some serious head ground contact with no mips and still here.

MIPS adds about 10c to my helmet temp which makes it uncomfortable. It makes the helmet shell float around and the helmet feel like its loose on my head and on my mtb mips helmet thats amplified 10 fold with a helmet light.

I’m firmly in the kask camp. Got 2 of their lids and way comfier than anything else I’ve worn.

Hopefully I’ll still have an intact head in 10 years!

Northwind

And then it goes out in the wild and suddenly helmet fit is a huge factor too. Or you cut your hair. Or the pads shrink over the years. or the most protective helmet in the world makes you sweat too much so you don’t wear it or you overheat and lose concentration and crash more. It’s all science, but it’s not the sort you can easily put in a lab

Agree with the rest but the elephant in the room here is the £200 (or whatever) helmet you crashed in 5 times hasn't been replaced because it cost £200 (or whatever) .. it wasn't a very big crash .. was it?

MIps tech however adds weight which is not good and puts a hard layer in the helmet which again is not good

~25g seems to be quoted in a few places.

I reckon I lose more in an average haircut and gain more on a rainy day.

And it's definitely not a "hard layer", it's at best a slightly more elaborate version of the existing plastic adjustment cradle. And if something penetrated that far through the helmet you would probably be wishing it was a hard layer!

thisisnotaspoon

~25g seems to be quoted in a few places.

And it’s definitely not a “hard layer”, it’s at best a slightly more elaborate version of the existing plastic adjustment cradle. And if something penetrated that far through the helmet you would probably be wishing it was a hard layer!

Most implementations of MIPS I've seen the extra weight won't be a problem as they seem just reduce the thickness of actual protective stuff... something penetrating the helmet I'd prefer to benefit from a thicker helmet.

One huge flaw in Kask’s approach: it assumes a full head of hair for maximum benefit

A well-designed combover with plenty of Brylcream to keep it in place is probably better than a full head of hair.

All i know is i’ve had some serious head ground contact with no mips and still here.

Anyone who has been riding bikes for a decent length of time will have cause to thank their helmet at some point. That doesn't mean that helmet safety can't be improved.

This:

MIPS adds about 10c to my helmet temp which makes it uncomfortable. It makes the helmet shell float around and the helmet feel like its loose on my head and on my mtb mips helmet thats amplified 10 fold with a helmet light.

sounds like you simply bought an uncomfortable helmet. I've had plenty of helmets with MIPS and don't recognise these problems, even with a helmet light. (Fwiw, my 'road' helmets are non-MIPS, so I don't have any axe to grind here)

stevextc
Free Member

Agree with the rest but the elephant in the room here is the £200 (or whatever) helmet you crashed in 5 times hasn’t been replaced because it cost £200 (or whatever) .. it wasn’t a very big crash .. was it?

Yup, good point.

I don’t have mips in any of my helmets, am bald and still alive…..

I, on the other hand, died several years ago from being bald and not having MIPS.

MIPS isn't much extra cost, so why wouldn't you buy it?

I think there are a couple of other types that work similar to MIPS.

All I know for certain is that I've cracked 2 helmets after crashing into things. A forest barrier in Wark forest during a Polaris Challenge & a tree at Glentress.
I've yet to test my MIPS Bell to that extent, but at least my head's still intact & ready to give it a go.

Kask’s argument has always been that to include MIPS means they have to compromise design and comfort whilst adding weight and cost, thus making it a poorer experience all round for a lot of customer.

To all the baldies - it’s as much about scalp movement as hair movement. The initial rotational impact is lessened by the fact that the scalp slides over the skull first and gradually tensions - the tests as they are used today for MIPS are essentially a rubber head where the force of impact moves directly from the helmet to the skull with no energy dissipation.

I guess the argument therefore is that you don't need MIPS for a helmet to have some degree of efficacy, but still nobody can categorically say there are zero benefits from MIPS for mitigating rotational injuries so it's all still a bit 'meh' really.

I still think fit and comfort (and to some extent cost) take precedence, you're less likely to take a tumble in the first place if you're not cooking your brain or have a lump poking into the side of your noggin.
So MIPS isn't something I would go out of my way to have, others will want to hedge their bets which is fine I suppose.

Plus I have plenty of hair and from looking at my Dad I don't think baldness is on the cards any time soon so nature has gifted me a consistent shear layer anyway 😉

Had a Giro Hex helmet (no MIPS) that got put to the test about 6 months ago with an OTB. Did the job no sign of concussion all good. Replaced it with another Giro but this one came with MIPS. Wasn't an active choice on my part but was a good deal at CRC.

Can't say that I notice it moving or making a noise, plus it's more comfortable than the older helmet, but I guess that's just improvements in the RocLoc fitting.

So in summary I wouldn't let the presence or absence of MIPS sway my helmet choice. But if it's there I'm not complaining.

MIPS isn’t much extra cost, so why wouldn’t you buy it?

Much extra cost being what?
My last 8 open face helmets cost 6x£10 and 2X£12.50

MIPS isn’t much extra cost, so why wouldn’t you buy it?

I think there are a couple of other types that work similar to MIPS.

Because MIPS systems seem to be very shoddily made for the 40 GBP on-cost. I am not against it per se, but I have also worked in marketing for a good deal of my life. Someone with be telling folks they don't need gravel bikes or 35mm bars and stems next.

They are introducing MIPS into motorcycle helmets in Europe. And then there is the on cost.

mrmoofo

Someone with be telling folks they don’t need gravel bikes or 35mm bars and stems next.

Phew.... but how about Rev Grips and those suspension bar thingy's... don't we need those?

Oh...