BLACKSBURG, Va. – Plenty of people have been hitting the slopes this winter and Virginia Tech is researching ways to make it safer for you.
The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab is taking a closer look at the helmets worn when skiing and snowboarding.
“Wearing a helmet can be the difference between life and death,” said director of Tech’s Helmet Lab, Steve Rowson. “If you have something on your head to manage the impact energy, you are going to be a whole lot better off than not. What we do is assess the difference between helmets and determine which one is less likely to produce a concussion.”
For each specific sport, researchers have to find ways to mimic the motion of falling or hitting your head.
“We developed a test method that emulates specifically how people hit their head skiing and snowboarding. So we have to think about things like hitting snow and ice has lower friction. They’re traveling forward at fast speeds and all of that gets emulated inside the labs,” said Rowson.
After 35 helmets were put to the test, the lab came out with their ratings.
“The best helmets tended to have some sort of anti-rotation technology inside. And all the different manufacturers have different ways of doing that but they tended to do pretty well,” said Rowson.
They tested a variety of brands like Oakley, Giro, Smith and more but the price tag didn’t always reflect the helmet’s rating.
“You would think that the most expensive helmets are always the best helmets, but that is not necessarily true. Our top rated helmets were similar to helmets that were at the bottom of the ratings,” said Rowson.