DOT Helmet Standard Is Flawed

I do not believe people should be forced to not wear motorcycle helmets.  However, I also do not believe motorcyclists should be forced into wearing a helmet that could also be a contributing factor to injury.  What I am saying is that I believe the basic individual American adult is intelligent enough to decide for themselves when and when and even whether to wear a motorcycle helmet.  Especially when a significant percentage of motorcycle helmets on US highways, constituting many thousands of helmets on the road today, do not even meet the minimum standards of the extremely outdated DOT helmet standard.

In American states with some form of motorcycle helmet requirement. that requirement tends to require motorcycle helmets to meet the US DOT standard.  This standard is one of the weakest in the world in terms of helmet safety and allows manufacturers to design helmets to pass the testing that they may (or may not as it is not required by the standard) before self-certifying that their product meets the standard for them to sell.  This self-certification is only one of the flaws of the DOT standard.  It allows manufacturers to build a helmet that meets a very minimal list of requirements, and then self-certify that the helmet complies with the standard.  Even if that helmet is no more than a hard-shelled yarmulke with a DOT emblem on it.  As long as that helmet has not been; randomly purchased and tested by the USDOT's independent labs, and then actually failed the testing protocols, that certification is valid by law.  So a manufacturer can sell thousands of helmets that would not meet the standard and it would be perfectly legal.  If by chance that model helmet was purchased and tested and failed these tests.  A recall may or may not be required.  Even this would result in only a small percentage of the affected motorcycle helmets to being returned due to recall.  Between 1980 and 2008, just over 1,500 motorcycle helmet models were tested by independent laboratories.  Of those, over 60% failed to meet the standards.  Each model failing represented tens of thousands of helmets sold.

The DOT standard was based on earlier 1971 ANSI research on head injuries in crashes.*  However, these weren't motorcycle crashes, but automobile crashes with unhelmeted occupants.  This is the second flaw in the DOT standard.  It was based on head injuries to unhelmeted automobile occupants, not motorcyclists.  Two completely different types of crashes with significantly different rates and types of injury involved.  Yet the NHTSA moved forward with inaccurate data to create this standard.  

The DOT standard allows 400g's at impact.  That is the equivalent of a pick-up truck on your head.  Even if only for a few milliseconds this stress can cause damage to soft tissue such as; blood vessels, ligaments, and muscle in the neck and shoulders, but NHTSA (who created the standard) does not even put any consideration of these effects into its research.  Other helmet standards, such as SNELL and ECE are recognized around the world, and use the much lower but still significant level of 290g for 2 milliseconds.  Even this level is still on the cusp of a skull fracture.  However, DOT is significantly higher, with a lower requirement for protection.  Does only half head forms with an accelerometer inside a helmet actually constitute a reasonable representation of a human head and neck?  Apparently, it does to DOT.

Flaw number three can be shown as the DOT's failure to even test "roll-off".  Or how much the helmet rolls around on the wearers head as the head moves from side-to-side.  DOT also does not test face shields on helmets for impact safety.  While other standards do DOT ignores the potential for debris to strike the motorcyclist in the face.  

Perhaps it can be said that the fourth major flaw in the DOT standard is that it is outdated.  The last major change to the standard took several years to complete, and it simply involved the labeling of the DOT emblem on the back of a helmet.  The DOT standard has "changed minimally since its introduction" in the words of a study by the Head Protection Research Laboratory in 2001.  Since that time the only change has been the previously mentioned labeling change.

However, possibly the worse flaw is the way that manufacturers are able to design strength into specific areas of their helmets in order to pass the minimal DOT standard while leaving other areas they know are not in the testing standard to be less well protected.  The manufacturers intent overall is not the safety of the rider, but being able to sell their product and receive a profit.  Thus helmets can be designed to pass any DOT testing they may receive, but still not provide adequate safety to the motorcyclists wearing them in a crash.  Strength in real life is measured at the weakest point.  A real-world motorcycle crash is very good at finding those weak points and exploiting them.

Of the impact speeds that a DOT helmet is supposed to attenuate, the highest is on average, 13.4 mph.  This incredible speed is attained by dropping the helmet in a free fall from 72 inches (6 feet).  Or, mechanically moving the helmet at an equivalent speed.  The lesser impact is attained by dropping a helmet from 54 inches.  That's four and a half feet.  This impact, by the way, destroys the helmets ability to effectively protect the motorcyclist during a crash.  It is for this reason that manufacturers place in the helmets users booklet an instruction to replace the helmet if it experiences an impact, even if there is no visible damage.  How many helmets on the road today have fallen off a shelf, or motorcycle accidentally?  While the manufacturer has said this may destroy the helmets ability to protect the rider, rarely are helmets returned or replaced for such an impact.  So this leaves a significant number of questionable helmets on the heads of motorcyclists.  Above and beyond the possibly hundreds of thousands of helmets self-certified by manufacturers that could not actually pass scrutiny if tested.

These flaws would seem to show that the DOT standard is virtually useless.  The standard has been considered obsolete by many in the motorcycle safety research field for decades.  Manufacturers are able to design helmets to withstand impacts on the places that the standard states are to be impacted.  Manufacturers are not even required to test their helmets before self-certifying that they meet the standard.  The highest impact velocities are so low, they can be nearly attained simply by falling off a motorcycles seat, or table.  Yet, every year, millions of motorcyclists are forced to wear helmets, and the vast majority wear the minimum they have to wear, a DOT helmet.  The DOT standard truly brings into question whether mandates and universal helmet laws are truly about safety or more about providing law enforcement with a pretext for possible traffic stops.  If being mandated to wear a DOT helmet is truly about motorcycle safety, then why have automobile fatalities been going down for many years, while motorcycle fatalities have remained relatively unchanged for over a decade?

I urge you to think about these many flaws in the DOT standard, and consider the question; do we really need to mandate that motorcyclists must wear helmets that meet such a flawed standard, or might they actually be able to choose for themselves if and when they would wear a helmet?

Catch you on the road sometime...



* ANSI standard Z90.1