IB14: 6D Brings Revolutionary Omni Directional Suspension Technology to MTB Helmets

A lot of factors in preventing head injuries… it’s a good start to build in suspension. I’m with you Mr. P on the football reference. In HS we had air bladders in the football helmets but it was crude at best. Football helmets are much larger now. Maybe this is the answer… I have no idea.

I bet we could make a fantastic football helmet.

If we were willing to throw them out every play where someone was tackled.

how ist bis Different from MIPS?

@Mr. P: One of the issues with football helmets is that the more protective they are, ie. the more impact they will absorb before reaching the injury threshold, the more players tend to abuse that protection by ramming things harder with their heads. This has lead to what may be a zero sum game, or, some have proposed, negative returns. There is even a paradox where wearing no football helmet leads to more soft tissue injuries and lacerations, but fewer concussions. I don’t think that there is likely to be much of a similar effect with bike riders, although there may be some uneducated riders who ride beyond their limits simply because they are wearing a helmet.

Regarding the brain still hitting the skull at full speed, there is a certain acute g load that the unprotected head can take without this occurring due to the brains natural cushioning system. The goal of any good (concussion rather than purely skull fracture oriented) helmet is to push this number up beyond what you are likely to encounter in normal bike use. I would say they definitely help, but as to how high this or any other maker has raised this raised the “concussion free crash severity threshold”, we need more independent data to say.

@Mario, this differs from MIPS in 2 ways. First, all implementations of MIPS I have seen install the slip plane against the riders head (most common) or between two hard outer shells (only on POC full face models to my knowledge). This setup occurrs between two layers of EPS.

Second, MIPS is purely a slip plane, whereas this also has the capacity to function as a kind of mini shock absorber. It kind of reminds me of the way rubber engine mounts work in a car.

1. Helment hits object. 2. Head (skull) hits helment. 3. Brain hits skull. The goal should be to absorb as much energy as possible in steps one and two, minimizing the hit taken by the brain. It’s the same concept employed in the design of modern racing cars (think Indycar). When one of those cars hits the wall at 200mph there’s usually a massive amount of damage to the car, carbon flying everywhere. That’s energy being absorbed. That’s by design. Let the car take the hit, not the driver.
I’m thrilled that helment makers are now doing a little innovating to make their products safer. Current models are just stiff stiff stiff – great for big hits…and transferring energy to the head. This one looks good, like those little elastomers will absorb the little hits.