Bicycle Helmet Safety Ratings: Specialized Tactic 4 (MIPS) Comes Out on Top

Virginia Tech’s helmet test labs, started in 2018, have rated a particular Specialized design the safest for bicycling.

Cost: $110
Style: Mountain
Certifications: CPSC
Score: 8.6

It’s neither the most expensive nor the least fashionable. However, for half the cost of the best design, the Specialized Align II (MIPS) also received a five STAR rating with a close score of 9.6.

The STAR equation was originally developed to estimate the incidence of concussion that a college football player may experience while wearing a given helmet over the course of one
season… The bicycle STAR equation sums the exposure-weighted risks for each impact to generate a single representative concussion incidence value per helmet model. The predicted exposure (𝐸𝐸) is determined for each impact location (𝐿𝐿) and velocity (𝑉𝑉), while concussion risk (𝑅𝑅) is computed as a function of the average peak resultant linear acceleration (𝑎𝑎) and average peak resultant change in rotational velocity (𝜔𝜔) in each impact configuration.

One thought on “Bicycle Helmet Safety Ratings: Specialized Tactic 4 (MIPS) Comes Out on Top”

  1. Consider also wind noise created by the helmet which makes hearing overtaking electric cars alot more difficult..hence i quite like the smooth bowling ball style if i wear a helmet…i can hear the cars coming.

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