Different Helmet Certification Agencies and my views

The recent, furore in the Indian Helmet market brought me to write this - a liberal selection of sources from around the Internet, and websites of various agencies involved in the helmet certification business. The blog should have been written months ago- but then its never too late.

The specs of the ISI helmet requirement is nothing but a sham copy-paste job of the DOT regulations which are put into place the by the US Department of Transportation and enforced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Now, the NHTSA expects that every manufacturer of helmets or seller of helmets, at the minimum to self-certify that the product they are selling, meets or exceeds the DOT FMVSS 218 requirements.
The penalty is rather severe, of USD 5000 PER helmet manufactured- of the model/version that gets picked up for testing and if it fails. Being the good 'ol USofA, one can safely assume that the DOT sticker is worth its value. Along similar lines is the ECE 22.05 regulation followed by about 50 nations in Europe. SHARP in UK, and CRASH in Australia, and of course the ISI in India, are a few others.

* A few of the DOT Helmet Tests*
Helmet is dropped onto a spherical anvil from a height of 1.83m
Helmet is dropped onto a flat anvil from a height of 1.83m
Pointed striker is dropped onto helmet
Weight is applied to retention system (up to 300 pounds of force for 120 seconds)

However, ECE testing is the most rigorous and most up-to-date. It is in many ways a combination of elements of both DOT and Snell procedures, with a few extras added in. ECE testing involves:
 Impact absorption by dropping helmet onto a flat anvil
Testing chin strap buckle for slippage
Chin strap material is tested for tension failure at over 670 lbs. of force
Testing for abrasion resistance
Shell is tested for deformation under weight of nearly 150 lbs.
Visor is tested as an integral part of the helmet

While DOT is done on the honor system and Snell is optional allowing many helmets to fall through the testing cracks, the ECE standard requires that helmets be tested before the model can hit the market.

* A Note on SNELL* 
Snell Memorial Foundation is dedicated as a non-profit organisation into preparing basic guidelines for helmets ranging from Equestrian, snowboarding, mopeds, motorcycles, auto car racing and even kids cycling helmets. In the U.S., Snell is held to be the superior helmet certification. Snell helmets are tested to a more rigorous standard, as the standard itself is derived from motorcycle racing, where impacts tend to be more severe. A number of differences exist between Snell and DOT, in both the organizations themselves, and in how the tests are administered.
A few of the significant differences are:
The Snell Memorial Foundation is a private non-profit organization;
NHTSA is a federal government agency while Snell certification is voluntary for the manufacturers;
DOT certification is mandatory, Snells standards are more rigorous than DOT standards
Snell does testing of prototypes to aid manufacturers in the production process;
DOT applies only to production models Snell issues a new certification standard every 5 years.

The current standard is SNELL M2015, which is a significant change over the previous M2010. Snells' helmet testing is similar to DOT testing, but with additional requirements. They are:
Snell uses 5 different shaped anvils instead of two Helmets are dropped from multiple heights (all of which are higher than DOTs)
Snell tests the chinbar along with the dome of the helmet
The visor is also tested, by shooting it with three lead pellets from an air rifle
The killer test being - the hardest Snell test for a motorcycle helmet to meet—is a two-strike test onto a hemispherical chunk of stainless steel about the size of an orange. The first hit is at an energy of 150 joules, which translates to dropping a 5-kilo weight about 10 feet—an extremely high-energy impact. The next hit, on the The helmets are mounted on a 5-kilo (11 pound) magnesium headform and then dropped from a controlled height onto a variety of test anvils to simulate crash impacts on various surfaces and shapes.
This test criteria comes from the fact that in the real world, your helmet actually hits flat pavement more than 85 percent of the time.

*Coming to back to ECE* 
To gain ECE certification, a manufacturer must send a batch of 50 production versions of the helmet for independent testing. The testing is done in a third party lab with witnesses from both the manufacturer and the ECE in order to grant certification.

If I was to be asked, for personal choice- its very strange, that SNELL does not approve or even entertain modular or helmets with inbuilt visors, due to moving parts and secondly due to the cavity in the forehead region due to the visor retractability. When I met with an accident, I was thrown over the handlebar, head first into a rock wall, the impact was directly on the spot for which the helmet was not given the Snell rating- the area over the retractable helmet.

So I wear a ECE+DOT MT Blade helmet in the city and I use a Shark Spartan which also is a ECE+DOT approved helmet.  I am of the belief that the slight ‘give’ the non-Snell SHOEI GT Air absorbed the shock and saved me from what could have been a severe concussion or a diffuse brain injury due to the extreme rigidity demanded of SNELL helmet bodies.

I would probably lean toward an ECE helmet over the DOT+SNELL ones at this point.

Having said that, the FIRST rule, is buy a helmet that fits your face- certification comes next. It has to be snug, and prevent you from chewing gum when you wear it. It shouldn’t give you hotspots on the temples, cheeks, top of the head at the back and should give you enough space to pout your lips and spit any bug that may enter your helmet at speeds thru and open or partly open visor.

I have an interesting anecdote- acknowledgement-  from http://www.mcrider.com

“The European Union recently released an extensive helmet study called COST 327, which involved close study of 253 recent motorcycle accidents in Germany, Finland and the U.K. This is how they summarized the state of the helmet art after analyzing the accidents and the damage done to the helmets and the people: “Current designs are too stiff and too resilient, and energy is absorbed efficiently only at values of HIC [Head Injury Criteria: a measure of G force over time] well above those which are survivable.” As we said, it’s a lively debate.”