dtoc
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On 1/27/2022 at 11:23 AM, marka said:Howdy,
I think that's a pretty key assumption. And if its invalid, it may well be exactly why the helmet does poorly on impact tests. As to the assumption itself, it obviously doesn't hold up when pushed. A knit winter hat fits really, really awesomely, but I think we can all agree that it doesn't provide much protection.
Until a company like CCM starts publishing internally generated impact data, the only game in town trying to quantify relative protection level is VT. Its pretty disheartening to see then being ignored by manufacturers. That's particularly true when how a helmet performs on independent impact studies could be a major advertising tool for them. There's not many parents that aren't willing to shell out another hundred if they believe you when you say their kid's head will be protected better.
MarkThe issue I have with the VT ratings is not their testing methods but the post processing assumptions that are made to generate the rating.
2021-2022 Gear Sightings
in Ice Hockey Equipment
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They run their test at 3 impact speeds on 4 helmet locations. To come up with a single rating, they have embedded an assumed number of impacts for each of the 12 combinations. There is little research data published on what to use and they have chosen 1 reference to use. "The average hockey player experiences 227 head impacts per season."
Until very recently they only published this single rating and even when reading their paper, you were not able to determine if a helmet has bad for a certain type of impact.
Recently, they updated their results presentation to include ratings for each of the 3 impact speeds. Be careful reading the numbers because all the ratings are relative and the scale adjusts.
The one the surprised me the most is the SuperTacksX. Having looked at the helmet, I would have expected it to fail at the high velocity impacts and be great at the low velocity. But the results show the opposite. @marka
https://helmet.beam.vt.edu/hockey-helmet-ratings.html#57
The 2nd aspect is the risk analysis, the correlation between test results and likelihood of concussion. This is harder for me to dispute, as I am not an expert, but combining their testing with other concussion research models for this would be good.
Overall, I greatly appreciate the work they have done, as no one else has published anything close to this level of scientific analysis on the helmets available.