Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute Links Page

Links

Summary: Helmet and bike safety links. Please check our links policy before proposing a new one.

The sections below: - or you can just page down

Helmet Information Sites
Promotion Campaigns and Resources
Injury Prevention Sites
Helmets and related products and add-ons
Helmet Covers
Sites We Disagree With (on another page)

Helmet Information Sites

SafetyLit produces a weekly digest with hundreds of journal articles abstracted every week. A search using the phrase "bicycle helmet" finds more than 300 journal articles and reports on the topic. A goldmine for researchers provided by the Center for Injury Prevention Policy & Practice at San Diego State University. You can subscribe for the weekly report, one of the most useful ways to keep current on journal articles in the helmet field. Unfortunately new indexing has been discontinued.

The US DOT National Transportation Library search page.

You can research transportation-related journal articles on bicycle helmets (and other subjects) on the TRIS Search Page. TRIS has more than 400,000 books, journal articles, and technical reports on transportation research from the 1960's to the present. Put "bicycle helmet" (without quotes) in the search window and it will return more than 145 references. The abstracts are sometimes disappointing, but the citations are very useful.

Snell Memorial Foundation

Snell's site has info on their standards and publications. They develop standards and test helmets to them in their own labs, issuing a certification if the helmet passes. They have a list up of Snell-certified helmets. They also have the first published reports from the Harborview research that Snell funded.

NOCSAE: National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment

NOCSAE sets standards for helmets for football, lacrosse, baseball and softball batters. Their headgear is all for multiple hits and usually provides for replacement of the interior at regular intervals. They use an "anthropomorphic" headform designed to respond to impact like a human head.

Safety Equipment Institute

SEI's page has info on their safety equipment certification programs. Their helmet certification program tests helmets to the ASTM standard and verifies the manufacturer's quality control procedures. They include a list of certified helmets.

Consumer Product Safety Commission.

CPSC has a page up with information on their helmet standard, product recalls and hazards, research, and the agency's current calendar of meetings. Here is the page with their listing of recalls including helmets. (We have a page of just their helmet recalls.) They have other material you can find by doing a search on "helmet." You can also subscribe to their press release by email service and receive recall notifications.

The Document Center

A private for-profit source of copies of the bicycle helmet standards we discuss.

Consumer Reports

The famed consumer magazine has a website that is part free, part paid subscription. We have summaries of their helmet articles. They mentioned us in their Blog in 2007.

See our page on Inexpensive Helmets for sources of helmets for campaigns.

Train the Trainer Helmet Workshop

The Minnesota State Bicycle Advisory Committee in collaboration with Injury Prevention Specialists of the Minnesota Department of Health, and the Twin Cities Bicycling Club presents a "Train the Trainer" Workshop on Bicycle Helmet Safety. The workshop teaches instructors how to run a class on selecting and fitting a helmet. Check the web, or this page with the email they send out to publicize the workshop.

Safe Kids Worldwide

Safe Kids Worldwide is a movement to prevent unintentional childhood injury. They have more than 300 state and local coalitions running community-based campaigns on child occupant protection, bicycle safety, residential fire detection, and scald burn prevention. They ran the most extensive and most effective helmet promotion campaign anyone has ever mounted in the US in 1989,and continue to have an active interest in helmets. Safe Kids provides inexpensive helmets to their chapters and to other non-profits through Bell, one of their sponsors. We have contact information for that on our page on inexpensive helmets. In addition, some of their local coalitions have helmet information up.

Department of Transportation

DOT's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has a website up with materials for teaching kids to ride safely, including a bike safety web page. It links to pamphlets and materials available for campaigns, and classroom materials for teachers.

Stanford's B-Hip Program

Stanford University's program for bicycle safety.

How Not to Get Hit by Cars

This very useful page features the author's observations of the ten worst situations for cyclists getting hit by cars, and his suggestions for how to handle them. Includes clear illustrations of the bad situations.

China Helmet Initiative - David Scott

David Scott is a teacher at Jiangnan University in Wuxi. He has launched a local helmet initiative, beginning with his students. He is working on getting some statistics and information together about helmets and head injuries in China. He has produced a well-done video to promote helmets there.

Stakki Stikka

Stakki Stikka is an Australian program using unique helmet stickers.

Head Injury Survivors

Our links to people who have survived a head injury.

Injury Prevention Sites

Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center

Home of the famous Thompson, Rivara and Thompson studies on helmet effectiveness. Summarizes major studies of helmet effectiveness, with estimates of the protection helmets offer and more. Their page on helmet effectiveness, which charts the findings of a number of studies. Also useful is their page on the effectiveness of helmet education interventions.

Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center

This project of the University of North Carolina is funded by the US Department of Transportation. It provides resources primarily to officials who serve as bicycle planners in localities all over the US, but the website has injury prevention info, research data, statistics and other resources available for all.

Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta

This website has access to many CDC documents on injury prevention, including helmets. For helmets the most interesting document is their 1995 Injury-Control Recommendations: Bicycle Helmets. (Also available in .pdf format.) We have one page of the Recommendations in our page on bicycle helmet laws, a compilation of evaluations done on helmet law effectiveness. CDC also has an interesting page on head injury and concussion. Since their resources move, you may need to use this search link.

Sites We Disagree With

Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation

"Updated 2020-08-29 to reflect the current status of this website. Below is an archive of the original page. Currently the site is mainly an archive, to preserve links that site articles. Not much has been added since about 2016. Efforts are currently underway to renew the editorial direction and add new content."

We have more on this page on helmet opposition.

Helmet Manufacturers

The manufacturer you are looking for is probably in the index of our latest writeup on Helmets for the Current Year.

Mirrors

Every vehicle on the road needs a mirror. Most helmet mirrors are tiny. They are close to the eye and actually show you most of what you need to see. But if you prefer a larger one, check out the Safezone Helmet Mirror. This one is 2.25" (57mm). That seems huge, but it does not block vision very much. It is geeky-looking, not stylish. It is well made and seems heavy at 1.5 oz/43 g. We recommend you not use the very strong mounting zip ties provided, but use hook and loop on the part that lies against the helmet so it will detach in a crash, even though the plastic ball-and-socket pieces in the arm will also detach. It seems expensive at $40, about twice what most small mirrors cost. We would mount any mirror with hook-and-loop to be sure it will readily detach in a fall.

Replacement pads

The Octoplus Kit is a starfish-shaped foam kit to replace helmet pads that claims to be universal fit. We don't quite believe that, but if your pads have disintegrated it may be worth checking out.

Applied Graphics

Bicycle helmet stickers in graphic designs to add either reflectivity or florescent color to your helmet. There is one warning bystanders not to remove the helmet after a crash. We have examined a PET-shell helmet with their graphics on it for a year and found no evidence that the adhesive had damaged the shell. The reflectivity seemed decent to us but their florescent colors are not reflective.

Da Brim

Da Brim makes very large helmet visors and all-around brims for really good sun protection. Probably a little flappy in high winds or if you ride too fast, but they also have a front stabilizer for riding on a recumbent bike.

Ice Dot

This info is stale! We don't find the IceDot site on the web any more.

Ice Dot is a crash sensor mounted on the exterior of a helmet that attempts to sense when the wearer has crashed. It records helmet motion, not the impact to the head, but it senses velocity, torque and impact severity. When an impact sets it off, the rider has time to deactivate it. If not deactivated it uses the rider's phone to send a text message with GPS coordinates to the Ice Dot website reporting the crash, and the website passes the SOS along to your pre-entered contacts. There is an info sticker on the helmet with your unique identifier pointing EMT crews to medical info that you have loaded on the Ice Dot web page. The initial cost is $150 for the sensor and setup, and $10 per year after that. For those who just want to use a wristband, Ice Dot sells those along with the helmet stickers for $20, with a URL that EMT's can use to access your emergency data on the Ice Dot site. That service also has the $10 annual fee. The site is icedot.org. The sensor must be charged from a charger or USB port, and will run for 24 hours on a charge. Some riders who often ride solo in remote areas--that still have cell coverage--welcomed the announcement. Field reports will be needed to determine the ability of the crash sensor to react appropriately to real life crashes.

O-tus Safe Sounds

O-Tus makes small near-ear speakers that attach to the helmet near your ears. We have not heard the sound quality. They would still inevitably affect your hearing what happens around you, a sense that we think is critical to safe bicycling. Not recommended, particularly because their mounting video recommends shaving some foam off the edge of your helmet so the adhesive on the mount will stick. To our shock, the technician actually takes a knife and shaves off some foam to make a more level mount, and to remove dirty foam that will not give a good adhesive surface. Since our message is "never modify your helmet liner" and nobody knows how much foam a user might take off, we would avoid this product.

Plum Enterprises

Plum Enterprises makes protective headgear for anyone from babies to adults in need of head protection around the house after head injury, surgery, during epileptic seizures, etc. These are protective caps not designed for the heavy impacts seen in bicycling.

Streetglo

Streetglo has reflective stickers and vinyl decals in at least nine colors and a large variety of designs, mostly intended for motorcycle helmets. The larger ones cover a full helmet. There is one warning bystanders not to remove the helmet after a crash. Some of their reflective materials come from 3m. Others come from Nippon Carbide Industries (USA), who certify that the material will not damage motorcycle helmet shells made of PET, Lexan and other plastics. They have now added bicycle kits, and their web page has some good photos of the results. That much material tends to be expensive.

Helmet Covers and Add-ons

Helmet covers and other add-ons are a special category. The lycra covers that are held on with elastic bands around the bottom are probably ok, since research years ago showed that they just slip off in a crash, and are actually beneficial for sliding for the first inch or so. But we have never seen any lab tests of the ones with horns or other projections, so we would not use one, and you are on you own with those. We have a page up on helmet covers.

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