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Your heart makes you want to ride. Your head helps you get back home.
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Welcome to the Throttle and Roast podcast. I'm your host, Niels Meersschaert. In today's episode, I'll be looking at helmet tech, what keeps your head safe on a ride. Recently, MIPS announced they were buying Koroyd, and both brands are leaders in the next generation of helmet safety tech. So I wanted to look at helmets in more detail for this episode.
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I'll be covering some of the benefits that helmets provide.
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I'll also look at some of the materials and tech commonly used in helmets. And then I'll look at the various testing standards around the world. And finally, I'll look at some of the modern tech making its way into helmets that might provide an update to the classic EPS foam liners used in most lids.
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So let's start with the purpose of a helmet. Now, most people will sort of look at a helmet and be like, "Oh, it's there to protect your head." And it's like, yes, crash protection is a factor in world. innacle is a factor in what a helmet does.
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But I think a lot of riders or even lay people may not even be fully aware of all of the other things that a helmet is doing for you. So certainly for a crash, there's a couple of elements that it does. It is meant to reduce or prevent penetration. This is anything that would go and crash through the helmet and then impact your head directly, your skull directly. penetration prevention is definitely one of the things.
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And if we look back in history, this was actually one of the first reasons why helmets were created. Lawrence of Arabia, for example, famously died in a motorcycle catapulting over the handlebars of motorcycle and crashing his head. And that inspired people to say, hey, how do we reduce injuries from this?
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And they were really focused on the penetration aspect in the beginning. But as people started to build out these new helmets to protect against that, they started to realize a second issue that was a problem. It wasn't only about the skull being penetrated through because of some foreign object. It was also about the impact that was hitting into the skull and therefore causing injuries internally, even if there was no penetration of the skull. And this impact absorption really is what most of us today think of as the reason for using a helmet.
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And if you're familiar with cars, you've probably heard of the concept of a crumple zone. Well, crumple zone is basically engineered failure. It's intended to allow the front of the car to collapse in a planned way such that it absorbs the energy versus if it was a solid object, it would transfer all of the energy from an impact into the occupants of the vehicle, causing them to come to a stop immediately. That would be pretty severe. So by slowing down or allowing some of that energy to be absorbed by compressing the vehicle, this takes some of that energy load and slows the deceleration of the vehicle. Well, your helmet works in exactly the same way.
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It is with the liner is providing some absorption, which is going to slow down that deceleration. It's going to absorb some of that energy and therefore trying to reduce the energy and deceleration. More importantly, that is occurring to your head. So those are the primary safety one that a lot of people will think of. But there's also other features that your helmet provides. Number one is it also provides environmental protection. When you're riding around and you have your helmet on, It's also protecting you from bugs that are in the air as you're riding through it, wind that's going to hit into your rocks or pebbles that might be kicked up by the vehicle in front of you and then smash into your head. Well, it's going to protect against those as well. So think of not just the crash of what your helmet is protecting you from, but all of the other environmental and potentially debris that could be kicked around in your normal course of riding. Now, the third aspect that a helmet provides, of course, is comfort. Now, there are some people who will say, I hate wearing a helmet because it's so uncomfortable.
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this is probably more of a factor of that they're just not used to doing it in some ways.
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Because helmets actually do contribute to making you more comfortable than if you did not have a helmet. And there's a couple of reasons for this.
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Number one is temperature regulation. If you are riding around and let's say it's a cooler temperature, if you just have your bare head out there, all of the wind is going directly against your skin. All of the heat that's in your head is being sucked out immediately.
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And you're going to feel, because a lot of the heat is in your head, you're going to feel substantially colder than you would otherwise. And when you're thinking about this, don't think just of the temperature that it is outside. You have to also include windchill. Because if it's, let's say, 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Well, as you're riding along, you get up to 50, 60, 70 miles an hour, the actual apparent temperature will be significantly lower than the temperature. And that's 65 degrees. And that's 65 degrees because of windchill. So your head will feel as though it is significantly colder. And this is where a helmet can actually really help is it's going to then prevent that immediate sucking of the heat away from your head and keep you a little bit more comfortable and warm.
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It also works in the reverse in the summer. And this is, I think, where a lot of riders will have almost a mistaken impression that it is cooler to ride without a helmet than with one.
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it really comes down to a couple of factors. Number one is choice of color of the helmet. If you have a dark colored helmet, it will absorb heat from the sun.
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So the interior of the helmet will feel warmer than if you didn't have that color that you've chosen. If you have a lighter color, on the other hand, it's going to reflect more heat and it will keep you cooler feeling in the helmet The second thing, and this is the one where I think most make the mistake, when you have direct solar energy hitting against your head, that is going to create a lot of heating of your head directly.
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If you have something in between there with that helmet, it will provide a little bit of a barrier so it doesn't get quite as hot as it would otherwise. So from a comfort perspective, temperature regulation is really something that the helmet can The second one that it will help from a comfort perspective is in noise reduction. If you, again, didn't have a helmet, all of the noise and the wind is rushing right past your ears, it's going to feel really, really loud.
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Whereas the helmet is going to diminish that sound of the wind, it's going to keep your ears actually be able to hear for a lot longer than if you didn't have a helmet on. And there's a fatigue aspect that comes in from when you have all of that noise around you. So the helmet does reduce the noise, which makes you feel less fatigued.
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And this fatigue reduction in I'd say it's probably one of the biggest benefits. And I would consider it still a safety benefit as well. Because if you are fatigued, you're not going to be paying as much attention.
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You're not going to be as focused. You are more likely to get into an I almost would suggest that helmets in some ways are not just to protect you in a crash, but they're to protect you from having the crash because they're there to help reduce fatigue.
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So let's switch gears and we'll talk a little bit about some of the materials and technology that are in the vast majority of helmets on the market today. In general, helmets tend to have three layers that are providing some of the protective nature of them.
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There's going to be an outer hard and this hard shell will reflect foreign objects like that gravel that's kicked up by the vehicle ahead of you, bugs, birds that run across and try to hit you. It does help mitigate a little of these almost incidental impacts. It also will help provide some initial energy absorption on an impact. If you were, for example, to crash into the pavement or into the ground or into another foreign object, it will provide that initial energy absorption. The fact that it is a round shape also helps to dissipate, this is not a flat shape, so it can have a little bit of rotation and deceleration as it's hitting into whatever object it is, which does slow down some of that energy transfer. That smooth surface and that rounded surface also helps to minimize the grabbing that would occur on the ground if you were to fall with something that had a hard sharp edge. That would grab, dig into something, and then cause a very quick, rapid rotation or other type of an acceleration event.
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And that outer shell, if you think of it, because it can scrape along the ground, even if you didn't have a high enough impact, it's better to have that helmet scraping along the ground and the plastic being worn away than the side of your head. Now the or layer in a helmet is what's often referred to as the energy absorbing layer. And this is the key safety feature to absorbing the impact of a crash.
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It's usually made of EPS foam, which is a material that was created actually in the mid 19th century. It's not the most modern material out there. this material can break down over time and that can be accelerated by both sweat and the oils from your head, thus requiring regular replacement. Now everyone will always complain that a helmet can be very expensive and they're like, why do I have to replace this helmet every few years? And the reason is that it's a physical material.
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It is going to wear over time and the materials will break down. And that can be accelerated by the oils and sweat from your head. Now, if you regularly wash your liner, you can extend the life a little bit. So you might not have to be able to replace it, whereas if you didn't, then that's just going to be sitting there. right up against that EPS liner. It's going to deteriorating that material even faster. So while most helmet manufacturers will recommend a five year rotation, that's kind of the outer edge of it. If you ride more frequently and you don't necessarily clean out your liner regularly. You probably should replace your liner or your helmet overall more frequently than every five years because of that material breakdown. Now, another feature of not so much at a feature in a positive light, but a feature of EPS foam is that these cells that make up the foam tend to be closed and thus they have a limited airflow. So some manufacturers will effectively drill holes into them to allow some element of airflow within them. They may create some thin channels to allow air to flow over your head to have a little bit of a cooling impact from them. But in general, you can think of that the EPS is acting as an insulating layer. This is also why this type of material is also used for food packaging.
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It helps insulate that food from external temperature variation.
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So it can help keep you a little bit warmer and it can help you keep a little bit cooler in the summer because it is not transferring that heat directly as some other materials might.
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And the last layer that you'll have is the comfort liner. And this is the part that directly contacts your skin within the helmet. And it can aid in wicking moisture away from your head. that soft feel takes a, you know, a little bit of a softer edge from the hard edge that directly on the EPS liner would do. And it often has some additional padding to have just a little bit additional give that is actually adding in further energy absorption versus just the energy absorbing layers material. And it's available in different sizes to allow you to fine tune the helmet fit. Now another safety feature of a helmet is the retention system.
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you'll usually see these straps with a fastener fall into sort of two main groups. And the most common one would be the D ring.
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And what the D ring does is it's a pair two usually metal rings that kind of look like the letter D. And by you passing the between those two rings, you can actually create a tension The downside of the D-rings is, while they're very low cost to produce, because it's just two rings of metal that are attached to the strap, it's not really easy to put on or take off if you have your gloves on. And if you're a beginning it takes a little bit of time to get used to being able get through the D-rings, get them tied on, get them loosened up. Now the other main system that you'll see for retention, or at least the fastener for retention, would be a ratchet of some sort. This is very often found on modular style helmets. for example, has pretty much on all of their helmets, have the ratcheting, fastener. And the beauty of the ratcheting fastener is that it can opened and closed with gloves on. There's usually a, pull tab release, which is very easy to grab. It just disconnects from the ratchet and you can take the helmet off. And then when you're putting it on, because you don't have to have that really fine-tuned control as you're trying to get through the D-ring, you can very easily put it on or put it And the reason why modular helmets are very common for this is a lot of people who have modular helmets are maybe commuting. They're getting on of the bike, off of the bike all the time. So being able to do that with your gloves still on does make this much easier. But the downside of the ratchet is it does have more limited adjustability than the D-rings do because there's only a finite number of clicks that you have of the individual ratchet locations. And there are some arguments to be made that it won't be as secure as a D-ring. So this is where there's trade-offs of one fastening system versus another. So that gives us a good overview of some of main technical aspects that are part of a helmet. Where does a helmet take a little bit of a helmet or a helmet that can be made of a helmet? But how do we go about the helmet to make sure that it's doing what it is intended to do? Well, there's three major testing standards that are used around the globe here in the United States. We tend to use the D. O. T. standard or the Department of Transportation.
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And this is really the basic American standard. tests are actually self-administered by the manufacturer of the helmet.
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And the standard also offers pretty much a base level of impact absorption. Now, a key thing, and this is one of the things you have to remember with D. O. T. helmets, because there is no independent testing to ensure compliance with the standard, you might be buying a helmet that, even though it has a D. O. T. sticker put on it, may not even meet the standards.
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There's no real independent check of that. So just be mindful of Now, another major standard that's out there is ECE.
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These are the standards that are used in more than 50 countries in Europe and around the rest of the world. Now, these must actually be tested by a third party before it can get the label. So there is a bit more independent research and verification into this. So if you see a helmet that has label on you are more confident to believe that it is actually meeting the standards Now, this tests more safety factors like the optical quality of the face shield, and the logic of this is that if you're able to see clearly through the lens of the helmet, you are less likely to be in an accident. So there's additional sort of safety tests.
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Now, in DOT, they do check for things such as the field of view, but there's no testing standard for the optical clarity of any sort of a face shield that is on the helmet. Now, the third major standard is Snell. This was named after the race car driver Peter Snell, who was killed in a 1956 crash. Now, the testing is done by the Snell Foundation, and it's a pretty rigorous testing suite to be able to get that label. Because you're actually paying into an individual organization, the helmets that of course have the Snell standard tend to be a little bit pricier than ones that just have DOT or ECE, But it will be standard that is perhaps, some would argue, holding to a higher standard than what other manufacturers and other standards of helmet testing require. Now, I do want to mention, as I said, there's three major standards, but there are a couple of other ones that are out there. They're more of, I'd call them more of an emerging standard. They are hitting specific, what they see as, as gaps within the current framework of testing standards.
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And this would be FIM or FIM and Sharp. And the FIM is really the Federation of International Motorsport. It's really focused on track use. So if you're trying to make sure that your safety equipment, such as helmets, are going to meet the standards necessary at the Obviously, the speed involved at a track is much greater, but the opportunity for collision with a left turning vehicle here in the United States or a right turning vehicle is very unlikely on a track. So you don't have a lot trees sitting along the side of the road. So some of the impacts that would happen on a track while the speeds may be greater, there are less likely to have a immovable object than you would have in a real world riding situation. And Sharp, the way, the best way to think of Sharp is really, it's a rating system on top of ECE. So it'll get a star rating to kind of almost evaluate how well it meets the standard or how much it exceeds the it's really used for comparing different ECE lids one versus another to sort of see how far above the standard they meet. those are the standards that are existing out there, but how do they actually go about testing it? Well, the first thing is they take a helmet, they put it into a jig, and then an anvil, not the kind of Wile E.
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Coyote anvils that you think of from the old Warner Brothers cartoons. But it's a weight that is then dropped at a specific speed towards the helmet. And the helmet has a bunch of energy sensors and the absorption of that energy is measured since I know that I'm dropping a weight which has a weight specifically to it, I know it's being dropped at a certain speed. I know what the energy from the weight is going to be impacting onto the helmet. Now, when I look and measure on the interior of the helmet, I can see how much of that energy actually got transferred all the way through to the head form. And in this way we can actually then simulate what would happen in the real world in terms of a impact. Now, the shape of anvil actually has a dramatic impact on the imparted force to the helmet. For example, if you had a flat or a rounded it could simulate hitting the ground. And the load would then be spread out over a little bit larger area on the helmet, and therefore it's easier to dissipate some of that energy.
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However, an anvil with a sharper shape to it, not necessarily like an axe, but just even a tighter, smaller shape at the end of it. That wedge would sort of force all of the energy into a much smaller point on the helmet. And this would be a much more concentrated area, almost like if you hit, for example, a this is the basic sort of concept of how impact testing occurs. Now, when you look at individual testing standards, there are some variations that come into this. So, for example, in DOT, the manufacturer can basically hit the helmet anywhere they choose. And the maximum energy transfer is 400 g's. So you can you hear of pilots who are flying, fighter planes. They might get eight, nine, 10 g's, maybe on the upper end if you saw the latest Top Gun film. But 400 g's is the limit that DOT allows to be transferred to the head. So think that what's happening on the anvil of what is actually transferring or hitting to the helmet is obviously more than 400 g's. There is some energy absorption that's going on. But because the, in DOT, the manufacturer can choose where or where the helmet is hit by the anvil, they can kind of game the system a little bit. Since that manufacturer self certifies, they could hit at the point on the helmet that they know will have the best result. in some ways, rather than saying, Hey, let's test all across the helmet and make sure that everywhere we're hitting at least this minimum, they only have to hit it in one place and only to hit that 400 g standard. Now, ECE takes a little bit of a different approach. There are predefined points on the helmet that must be tested and there's more than one. And manufacturers could build up support at those specific points to get the helmet to pass. So they can still game the system. You know, if you, if you build to the test, you can sort of game it, but because there's not just a singular likelihood of having a helmet that is having failure points or weak points is less likely However, the strike speed is lower than DOT standards due to the fact that in most of Europe, the average crash speeds tend to be lower than in the US and they want to test for that.
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So think of an urban crash highway crash. So this is why they'll use a little bit of a lower speed.
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Now in Snell testing, they actually both a regular rounded Anvil to kind of simulate what you would get in both the DOT and the ECE standards. But they also use a wedge anvil that I mentioned before is going to give a sharper impact and creating more energy transfer.
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And what they do is they look across two blows, a total of less than 275 G's of energy transferred. So it's not a single 400 G blow like we have in DOT, it's two blows and combined together they have to be less than 275 G's. So this really is going to mitigate how much energy actually gets transferred over into the head.
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Now the other thing that technicians will do in the Snell standard is they'll actually look for weak points on the helmet and they'll actively seek those out and test those.
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because it's not predefined points, this allows the technicians to really kind of verify that this helmet is meeting the standard that is defined by the Snell anywhere on the helmet form. So this probably does have, at least from an energy absorption, probably the highest standard of the three that we've discussed.
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Now, as I mentioned, there's additional standards and testing that is done beyond the energy absorption. in ECE, there'll be a bit of a test for the optical quality of the face shield. How much distortion do you get looking through the lens? How easy is it to, see clearly? Does it cause a refraction? Does it cause a lensing effect that changes the apparent size or shape of objects that you see through there? This is actually a pretty good standard just to ensure that you have a good quality view. DOT does also test for field of view to make sure that you actually not obscured on either side of the helmet.
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This is why you tend to see most helmets have a fairly wide viewport to allow the rider to still be able to have a good frame of And then there's also tests for retention system effectiveness. How easy is it to pull the helmet off of the head?
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So there's some testing that is also done for this additional safety features just to ensure that the helmet is providing the greatest level of safety possible.
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So, let's switch into some of the modern and technologies that are out there.
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Because everything I've discussed so far is really predicated on the most common form, which would be typically an EPS liner. As we said, this is a 19th, mid-19th century technology of material. It's not most latest, greatest sort of feature that you have out there.
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It works, it's good, it's cheap, but it's not necessarily going to be effective as perhaps some other technology and/or materials could be. So, we're going to look at a couple of these. Now, the first one I'll talk about is MIPS. And MIPS stands for Multidirectional Impact Protection System. Which is a very long way of saying it effectively reduces rotational acceleration by as much as 25 to 40% in lab testing. And fundamentally, what it is, is it's connected to where the liner is. There's field that has a little bit of rotation and give inside of it. So, what happens is the liner itself and thus the skull, can actually rotate within the side of the helmet. So, if the helmet is trying to turn, the head doesn't have to turn exactly with it.
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There's a little bit of give.
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You can think of it almost as the same effect as an EPS liner but inside of the helmet to allow for rotation to occur on the helmet before it starts moving your head with it. That slowing down of that acceleration does reduce some of the rotational injuries that we can get. If you think of a glancing blow of the helmet, could cause your helmet to want to rotate, this is going to help to mitigate that. More commonly, you see this very often in dirt helmets. A lot of them now have incorporated MIPS into them because you do crash quite often on a dirt bike, and you're not replacing your helmet on every crash because these are low-speed crashes. But obviously, if you can minimize that rotational injury, this is going to be a good feature to set to Now, the second technology that I want to discuss is Koroyd.
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Koroyd is a kind of a weird-sounding name, but fundamentally what it does is it provides a similar absorption mechanism as EPS would do. But the way it is constructed is it utilizes several tubes that are welded together, and welding not in the sense of, hey, these are metal tubes, but it's plastic that is welded together. And as these tubes crumple, they absorb energy just like a crumple zone in a car would do. And this decelerates your head in a softer manner, just like an EPS liner does. So, fundamentally what it does is the same exact idea as you get with EPS foam.
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But because these tubes and you can think of them as individual spheres, they also have some give rotationally. So, the liner itself can actually rotate and be moved around. It's not a solid liner like you get with EPS where you can't physically move it on your own. Because these have a little bit of give, they do have a little bit of the energy absorption for rotational energy like what you get with the MIPS liner. And the design is really about 95% air, which allows it to be lighter than EPS for the same energy absorption.
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And because each tube is open, there's also more airflow so the helmet can actually not have to have channels cut into the EPS form to provide airflow like we do in most modern helmets today, but just by virtue of the Koroyd and the tubes, more air is going to flow through and thus has the opportunity to keep your head a little bit cooler without having to limit yourself to cutting channels in or holes in the middle of the EPS liner. Koroyd is currently used by Klim in Krios Pro Dual Sport Helmet and in their dirt helmets, the F5 and the X1 Alpha. And Thor has a dirt helmet called the Reflex, which also uses Koroyd. So there's not a huge range of helmets that are using this today, but again, it's proprietary technology. It's not like EPS foam, which the patents ran out a long, long time ago, given that it's a mid 19th century technology, But they're starting to become a little bit more available, and not just for motorcycle helmets. These are used, for example, armor, in the same way that material can actually provide that energy absorption for other types of armor. So think of chest armor when you're riding off-road. It does the same thing. Now with combination, because MIPS had just recently announced that they are buying Koroyd, this has the opportunity to enable both of these technologies to get into more helmets. There's going to be more marketing and push to get them out there. so you might start to see more helmets evolve to have these two technologies in the future.
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So let's wrap up. We covered some of the purposes of helmets including crash protection, but also protection against things like bugs or gravel, weather, plus comfort and fatigue features and benefits. And then we then looked at the materials in tech in most helmets on the market today. And next we looked at the three main testing standards of DOT, ECE, and Snell. Finally, we looked at a couple of new tech available for helmets that could have some serious benefits over the old EPS foam. So my question is, what do you think is missing from helmet tech today? Share your thoughts through the text the show link in the show notes, or leave a voicemail at throttleandroast.com/voicemail.
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Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you next week.