I may spend more time thinking about my helmet than most riders.  Having experienced brain injury I always want to be sure I'm protected as well as possible.  Yes I like a helmet that looks good, is light and one that keeps me cool but if I didn't think it would buffer most foreseeable blows to my brain it wouldn't grace my skull.

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Of all action sports that aren't powered by fossil fuels, mountain bikers must have the highest rate of helmet use. For most bmx riders and skaters it's just not cool to wear a helmet and sometimes roadies like to feel the wind through their hair along with the stubble on their legs. Skiers and snowboarders are slowly getting the message but mountain bikers have a virtually 100% opt in rate - with the exception of the occasional park, street or dj rider who wants to feel like he's part of the bmx crowd. (I'm assuming most grrl riders are smarter than that)

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After Sea Otter last spring I had a chance to have a look at Giro and Bell's design and testing facility in Santa Cruz. A giro di Giro is what it was come to think of it. This is where the ideas for new helmets and graphics spring forth and where all the in house testing takes place.

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Helmets begin life as two dimensional ideas on a computer screen. After they have been refined on the desktop they are made into 'Eggs' - sculpted scale models of the design that evolve over time.  Generally a dozen or more eggs are made before a new helmet gets the greenlight to go to the next stage.

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Virtually everyone I ride with wears either a Bell or a Giro helmet most of the time.  There are a few Troy Lee full-face die hards but around here the folks at Easton Bell Sports (who own both brands as well as Blackburn) have pretty much cornered the market.  You may have noticed that you either fit Giro or Bell lids.  When Bell purchased Giro back in 1994 they made a conscious decision to keep the head forms pretty much intact and in that way they have a shape for almost every head.  Surprisingly Giro helmets fit my misshapen noggin perfectly while Bells sit high like a ball cap on a basketball.  Much of my riding happens with a Giro Xen protecting my brain as well as a Remedy for days in bike parks or on one of the many local lines that scare me.

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After the industrial design team finishes a new helmet model a ' helmet master' is made in the R & D lab.  This is then put on a plane to Hong Kong where the tooling (the helmet mold) is made.  The tool itself goes through a rigorous testing procedure to ensure it meets Giro standards. At that point mass production in the dedicated HK facility ramps up.

The folks in Santa Cruz do all of their preliminary safety testing in house.  Most other brands leave the testing to the off shore manufacturer.  This was where the tour really got juicy.

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Clint in the test lab destroys 14,000 helmets every year in order to figure out how they respond in different scenarios.  An 11 lb dummy head with an onboard accelerometer is used to test impacts.  The dummy is lifted above an anvil and then dropped to see how fast the mass inside decelerates. This produces a 13 mph impact against the anvil bolted to the floor.  When dropped from 2.5 metres the mass inside the helmet produces a force of 213 grams in 8 milliseconds.  With no helmet the mass reaches a force of 500 grams from only six inches.

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Clint's job is to do his best to make a helmet fail.  If a model does fail it's re-engineered until it passes the tests.  It's not just one simple drop either; there is the flat anvil, the curved anvil, the wet helmet drop (soaked for several hours) as well as the frozen helmet drop.  On top of that strap and buckle failure is tested.  The goal is always to find out what happens in the worst case scenario

A helmet is dropped on the anvil. Photo ~ Forrest Arakawa.