One of the many great print ads from the heyday of ’90s mountain bike magazines was a double-page spread from Bell Helmets. It was a photo of a young girl around the age of 10 or 12 sitting on a stool, leaning forward looking expressionless at the camera. On her feet were a pair of bright and expensive-looking basketball sneakers. The headline, in big, bold all caps (as was the style at the time), read: “Does your kid have hundred dollar feet and a ten dollar head?”
I was probably around 13 when I saw this ad, still rocking a styrofoam Target special like most of the other kids. I showed the ad to my parents, but they weren’t going to hand over cash for a new helmet. I was less than a year into this new mountain bike thing, and certainly didn’t have $100 shoes on my feet. And kids like to try sports and don’t always stick with them. A piece of advice I got from my father when I showed him the magazine was, “Don’t believe everything they tell you in the ads, Vince,” (as someone who now works in marketing and advertising, I cannot disagree with that statement). Regardless, I saved up my paper route money and bought myself that Bell helmet.
Australia was the first country in the world to introduce uniform national mandatory bicycle helmet legislation, beginning in 1990 (for reference, British Columbia, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia did not pass their own laws for riders under 18 until 1995 to 1997. Alberta followed in 2002).
Helmets are different from all the other stuff in the bike shop. They’re not some shiny, frivolous upgrade to your bike or fancy apparel that matches the colour palette of your carbon bike frame. Helmets protect your brain, and the only photos I’ve seen of offroad cyclists riding without this essential piece of headgear are from the Klunkerz days.
Companies like Bell, POC, Troy Lee Designs and Smith all have a significant market share of mountain bike helmet sales. But is there any technology that’s making helmets safer? One of the most important advances was MIPS (Multi-directional Impact Protection System)—developed by, who else, the Swedes—a selling feature in dozens of brands of helmets in cycling, motorsports, snowsports and even equestrian. MIPS works by reducing rotational forces on the head, and features a low-friction layer inside the helmet that allows multi-directional movement of 10 to 15 millimetres on certain angled impacts. From the MIPS website: “The brain is more sensitive to rotational motion than linear motion because it has shear properties similar to water or gel. When different parts of the brain move relative to each other as a result of rotational motion, the tissues can stretch, which can cause concussions or other brain injuries.”
Think about how many times you’ve come off your bike, skis or board and how many times your helmet had an angled impact rather than a direct, perpendicular impact (I’ve suffered the latter once, and it is also not fun). MIPS has all the science and testing to back up its claims, as does Bontrager’s WaveCel, a rigid plastic matrix made to “flex, crumple and glide” during an angled impact. Koroyd, the technology in Smith helmets, is very similar. The only distinct form of helmet tech I could find (in a few hours of online research) was Canadian-developed Fluid Inside. This helmet liner uses viscous liquid pods to “make the helmet effectively float on your head on impact, acting like a reinforcement of the cerebrospinal fluid (CFS) inside your head to protect against both linear and rotational forces.” Fluid Inside was acquired by MIPS in 2019, so we’ll see if they use the technology or simply bury their competition.
An interesting piece of helmet tech that surfaced in the last few years isn’t actually a helmet at all, it’s an airbag for your head. And yes, of course, it’s developed in Sweden. Hövding makes a wearable airbag collar (that stylish, urban European cyclists can wear instead of a helmet) and in the event of a crash, the airbag deploys by sensing rapid acceleration. It isn’t perfect, with plenty of user complaints about battery charging issues, shipping challenges (due to the small explosive charge that triggers the airbag) and, most embarrassing of all, accidental deployments when you don’t actually crash. This tech doesn’t have a place in mountain biking yet, but it probably won’t be too long before we have safety airbags in our riding gear like we do in our cars. Having taken way too many hits getting thrown from my bike over the years, I would definitely consider all options on the table when shopping for head protection.
Vince Shuley is hoping to limit the number of blows to his head in 2023. For questions, comments or suggestions for The Outsider, email [email protected] or Instagram @whis_vince. n
