For several years now, Mips (multi-directional impact protection system) has been the go-to safety system for cycling helmets to protect against rotational impact. But Italian brand Kask doesn’t use Mips and instead has developed its own safety standard, which it says is better. Unsurprisingly, Mips doesn’t agree.
Kask began in 2004 and launched its first cycling helmet in 2006. It prides itself on being 100% Italian, with its production chain using only local suppliers in Italy.
‘When a crash happens, a cyclist experiences linear and rotational impact and since there is no universal method to measure the response of cycling helmets against rotational impacts, we decided to design our own,’ explains Luca Viano, director of product at Kask.
‘This is the most important work Kask has done in the past years. This will affect every product that Kask will make from now on and I believe that we have done a good job, and our helmets are safe and good enough to protect to everyone from impacts that are not considered in the current helmet standards.’
The current European helmet standards do not contain a standard for rotational impact, but more on this later. Plus, it is worth bearing in mind that Kask makes helmets and has its own rotational standard, whereas Mips is not itself a helmet manufacturer – brands integrate Mips into their own helmets.
Testing at Kask: The rotational impact WG11 test
Kask tests its helmets at the Newton lab in Milan, an independent testing laboratory. Two sizes of each helmet are tested, and each helmet is subjected to a maximum of three impacts.
The rotational test involves a Kask helmet being put onto an EN960 headform which weighs 4.7kg and which Kask says mimics the human head.
This is then dropped from a two-metre height at a speed of 6 metres per second, onto a steel impact anvil angled at 45 degrees and covered with 80 grade sandpaper (reflecting asphalt).
Inside the headform are three wireless linear accelerometers and three wireless angular rate sensors which then transmit the data onto a screen.
This data includes Head Injury Criterion (HIC) and Brain Injury Criterion (BrIC), with a HIC result greater than 1,000 indicating a high probability of skull fracture, and a BrIC score greater than 0.68 indicating high probability of brain injury.
BrIC takes into account angular rates and critical angular velocities and is the number which Kask primarily focusses on.
‘Every impact stops being dangerous to a person after 10 milliseconds, so a helmet needs to be able to react quickly,’ says Viano.
‘0.68 is the upper limit of what a regular human should be allowed to experience when protecting against concussion. Since February 2019 to today, every Kask helmet comes in at no higher than 0.39 on the BriC scale.’
How the Kask WG11 method came about
In 2019 it was made mandatory for motorcycle helmets to pass a rotational test, so the motorcycle standard was rewritten to include a rotational impact test. This new standard is called ECE 22.06 and this is where the specifications of the Kask standard predominantly come from.
The name WG11 is derived from the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) Working Group which is focussed on defining a rotational impact standard for helmets, Working Group 11.
Working Group 11 involves experts, test institutions, universities, and helmet manufacturers including Kask, Lazer and Mips, and the Group has been working on developing a standard for ten years.
‘The name WG11 is inspired by and to pay tribute to the group of experts working on scientific level to create a rotational impact standard,’ says Viano.
Kask vs. Mips: The debate on headforms
Kask uses the EN960 headform (on the left) while Mips uses the Hybrid III headform (on the right), and these have different coefficients of friction from one another.
‘The EN960 has a coefficient of friction of 0.3 which most closely represents the human head whereas the Hybrid III has a much higher one which means it can exaggerate the contribution of anti-rotational technologies,’ explains Viano.
‘It should feel the same when you rub your head and rub a headform. The Hybrid III does not feel like a human head, so Mips does not get the correct numbers as it does not have the right headform in its tests.’
So why does Mips use the Hybrid III headform?
‘For us at Mips we have used the Hybrid III because we believe that it is a better headform than the EN960 headform due to the overall specification for the biofidelity and its use in the rotational method,’ explains Peter Halldin, chief technical officer at Mips and who also came up with the idea of Mips with his PhD supervisor.
However as it turns out, neither headform is exactly ideal.
According to Halldin, who is also the convenor of Working Group 11, both Mips and Kask’s current choices of headform have been disqualified by Working Group 11 members from use in the new standard as they do not meet the required criteria.
‘Within Working Group 11 we put together a specification for a headform we wanted to use for a rotational test,’ says Halldin, speaking in his role as Working Group 11 convenor.
‘You need to have the correct mass, moment of inertia – which is like the mass but when you have the rotation – the head shape, centre of gravity and then the coefficient of friction between the headform and the element.
‘So when we made this list we disqualified both the EN960 and the Hybrid III. The Hybrid III was disqualified because we didn’t have all the sizes of the headform and because of the coefficient of friction.
‘We disqualified the EN960 headform many years ago. The members said that this headform doesn’t meet the specification for rotational tests as it was developed for linear testing.
‘So we have developed a new headform. It has been used the last year in a round-robin between different test laboratories in Europe, and we know it is working and it meets the specification.’
Kask and the CEN butt heads
Halldin is not impressed with how Kask has gone about its rotational impact standard.
‘Kask joined Working Group 11 around two and a half years ago, and to be honest they have not contributed much and then they hijacked the Working Group name to be their logo,’ says Halldin.
‘The problem, and what makes me worried, is that there are a few helmet manufacturers that have a little bit hijacked Working Group 11’s work, mixed it with the ECE 22.06 test standard and put together their own and used this Working Group 11 logo.
‘This could lead to a miscommunication to the end consumer saying that they have something that meet some requirements regarding rotation that they don’t have.
‘So I think they have a responsibility, especially as a member of the CEN, to not use it for their own commercial purpose.
‘We have asked them [Kask] to take away their information from the website. The secretary of Working Group 11 has tried to go through the lawyers within CEN, to try to make Kask withdraw their information on their website and ask them to not use the Working Group 11 logo, because it is a miscommunication.
‘CEN cannot do anything, they have tried but it is not possible from a legal perspective.’
Kask responds
Kask disagrees with Halldin’s comments and disputes the idea that the name WG11 would lead to any confusion for the end consumer.
‘We developed our Kask rotational impact WG11 test by taking inspiration from ECE 22.06 and from several scientific publications,’ explains Viano.
‘We decided to name our test Kask rotational impact WG11 test and we think there is absolutely no risk of confusion for the final consumer, because no cyclist will ever be able to read the letters WG11 close to a standard or a certificate of conformity, for example on their helmet label.
‘The new standard will have a serial number followed by the year of publication: EN XXXX – 20XX and helmets will always and only display a label stating conformity to EN 1078 – 2012 (or EN 1078 – 20XX when the new standard will be published).
‘No mention of the CEN working group 11 will be made in the bicycle helmet standard, so there will be no room for confusion or to be misled.
‘Our impression is that in recent years, the CEN TC158 Working Group 11 name and purpose were intentionally spread to the media and to the general public, with the specific aim of creating confusion. Something that obviously did not come from Kask.’
‘The SIS, Swedish Institute for Standards, contested Kask and appealed to CEN. CEN conducted an investigation and stated that there wasn’t enough material or substantive evidence to claim that the references to Working Group 11 constituted a copyright infringement.
‘Also, CEN stated that they couldn’t establish any link between the content published by Kask on its website and the substantive work produced by CEN/TC 158 WG11.’
What does the future hold for the Kask rotational impact WG11 test?
Kask could have simply joined other brands in using Mips in its helmets but the Italian brand has clearly outlined its reservations with Mips’ approach to testing.
Kask has a long way to go to beat the Mips marketing machine which has made helmet safety and Mips somewhat synonymous, but it also needs to prove itself in other areas too.
Currently only one Kask helmet, the Valegro, features in the prestigious Virginia Tech ratings, and it earns three out of five stars.
According to Kask’s Viano, this is due to Virginia Tech’s focus on volume and mass in its testing. He adds that the two new helmets Kask is soon to release both got five stars from Virginia Tech when they were sent for testing.
There is hope that once the new standard is defined much of the current debate around rotational impact standards will settle. Halldin believes this new standard should be established in less than five years time.
What is plainly evident is that the world of helmet safety is much more nuanced than first meets the eye, or headform, whichever one you choose.
Want to learn more about the different helmet safety technologies on the market? Read our guide to bike helmet safety
All image credits Kask