43% DOT helmets fail tests: A deeper analysis

Alright that’s enough giggling, had enough of your racket on the last article as well. Can’t a man even make fun of other less competent men in peace? Jesus, what has the world come to.

Saw this article on Rideapart, and the headline is quite troubling, “DOT Helmet Failure Rate Increases To 43 Percent“. A cursory look at the article made the headline look rather clickbait-y, but I used Rideapart to go to the source at Ultimatemotorcycling, and their headline was much more realistic and subdued. Then I used Ultimatemotorcycling to look at the actual data, and things aren’t as bad as they would seem.

Are roughly 50% of all DOT certified helmets actually failing inspections, and hence unsafe to use? Short answer is NO, long answer is also NO.

Short summary of the articles

DOT is a US based self-certification type of system. The Govt. doesn’t test helmets directly before they go out for sale, they try to scare the companies into testing themselves, with the Govt. then picking random samples from the market to determine if the helmets are safe enough or not. If not, big fines and recalls.

As Boeing’s self-certification of the 787 Max would tell you, it’s not the greatest idea to allow violently capitalist institutions to regulate themselves, but that’s where we are now. The data released by NHTSA on the random sample testing seems to imply that a substantial number of companies are selling unsafe helmets.

The “failure” of a helmet during testing can either be a relatively minor problem of mislabeling, or the major one of performance failure. The data indicates that performance failures in 2019 are at a staggering 43%.

The data

I’m only going to look at the data for the last 3 years, because that’s the generally accepted life of a helmet, and I can’t be bothered to look further.

Here are the actual helmets that failed since 2017. The ones marked in red are the failures from well-known brands:

I then picked up only the famous brands and looked at the individual failure reports, below is a table of that data, with links to the reports if you want to check them out for yourselves.

Brand	Model	Failure type	Reason for failure	Link to report
HJC	IS-CRUISER	FAIL Labeling	Lable not permanent	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645995
HJC	RPHA 90	FAIL Labeling	Lable not permanent	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645994
SPEED AND STRENGTH	SS1710	FAIL Labeling	Lable not permanent	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645997
AGV	OF32 (RP60)	FAIL Performance, Labeling	Impact duration	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645537
HJC	IS-5	FAIL Labeling	Lable not permanent	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645540
ICON	ALLIANCE	FAIL Labeling	Lable not permanent	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645541
AGV	OP03 (BLADE)	FAIL Performance	Impact duration	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645216
SHARK	SKWAL	FAIL Labeling	Missing manufacturer identification	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645191
SHIRO	SH-61 APP	FAIL Labeling	Missing manufacturer identification	https://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/acms/cs/documentList.xhtml?docType=CTR&docId=645206

In those same years, you can see below all the well-known brands and their helmets that passed without any trouble:

The analysis

There are only 2 helmets from popular brands that failed for performance:

1. AGV OF32 (RP60)
2. AGV OP03 (BLADE)

The reason for failure in both cases was the same:

S5.1 Impact Attenuation. (b) Accelerations in excess of 200g exceeded a cumulative duration of 2.0 ms: Low temperature sample, right location, flat anvil, 2nd impact, 2.1 ms.

As far as I understand, this failure happened because the acceleration of 200g happened for 2.1 milliseconds, whereas the limit set by the Govt. is 2 milliseconds.

I don’t know how important 0.1 milliseconds of extra acceleration is, but it doesn’t sound too bad.

Could an expert please tell me more if I’m wrong?

So overall, considering the number of popular helmets that passed, and only 2 helmets from AGV failing on performance, I’d say the whole overreaction about the statistics was unwarranted.

All the helmets that failed on performance are from unknown, rather sketchy sounding companies. Why anyone would buy a safety device from a company named Badass Helmets is beyond me, most of the failed helmets seem to be the upside-down bowl of spaghetti kind, popular with cruiser riders.

These people need to start making some good choices with their helmets, and their bikes.

The end

Yes the whole self-certification thing is stupid, yes the sample size tested by the Govt. is too small, yes we need a unified system of helmet certification that can be trusted.

But the data itself doesn’t show that things are too bad. DOT marked helmets from reputable brands continue to be safe, and there’s no reason to doubt that has changed.

Look mommy, I can write not completely useless stuff as well sometimes!