Bike helmets are sold on the basis of look, feel, and most importantly weight. Nobody is touting real safety. Compare motorcycle helmets, which come in two radically different safety standards: DOT, for harley riders who want something that is barely legal. And SNELL, for sportbike riders who actually want to keep their face on their heads after a crash. I have never seen a bicyclist with a full face helmet on the road. Bicyclists, like the harley riders, care far more about comfort and style than actual safety. At 50kph the asphalt doesn't care whether you just fell off a bicycle or a motorcycle. Please prove me wrong. Please find me a pic of someone riding a bicycle on a road in a snell motorcycle helmet. I have seen plenty of them in the downhill community, never among commuters.
My point is that this new material will not be used to make safer helmets. It will be used to make lighter and more stylish helmets that, like all the others, remain only slightly above the absolute minimum legal standards. That's the market.
Speed is a factor. A motorcycle can easily travel 60km/h - 120km/h. A bicycle is likely to be travel at 20km/h - 40km/h. 40km/h is pretty damn fast on a bike. Maybe the enthusiast guys riding the beach in the morning get up to 60km/h but that's a pretty small percentage riders.
An impact above 60kph is beyond the design of even a motorcycle helmet. They are primarily meant to protect the head falling onto the road surface and then sliding, an impact that it similar no matter the speed. Even when standing still, a head freefalling from 2 meters (ie bicyclist/motorcyclist tipping over) strikes the ground at 22.5 kph. That single impact is the US/DOT standard for bicycle helms. They don't accommodate sliding or repeated impacts.
Not true. Look at MotoGP crashes. They’ll hit the deck at 150mph, slide off into gravel, slide to a stop, and pop right up with nothing more than a few scuffs on their leathers.
I disagree. I'm a daily bike rider and I'm all for safer helmets. However I do need to be able to breath and not overheat. It's the realities of my commute that sometimes it's over 100F, like it was last week here.
I think there's a market for safer helmets and I own a bike helmet made to SNELL standards (for bike helmets not road). I just checked, I have a Specialized helmet with a Snell sticker inside that says "B90A". I'd buy a safer helmet, but I'm not willing to buy a full face helmet to offset the rare case of falling on my chin. Nor am I willing to pay 3-6x the price for some marketing campaign which claims that peak rotational acceleration is a major menace for bicyclists.
Sure Snell motorcycle helmets are more durable than bike helmets, but they have similar styrofoam of a similar thickness for lowering the peak acceleration. Sure my bike helmet would likely shatter into a million pieces in a major accident at 100 mph, but I don't bike at 100 mph.
Bike helmets are sold on the basis of look, feel, and most importantly weight. Nobody is touting real safety. Compare motorcycle helmets, which come in two radically different safety standards: DOT, for harley riders who want something that is barely legal. And SNELL, for sportbike riders who actually want to keep their face on their heads after a crash. I have never seen a bicyclist with a full face helmet on the road. Bicyclists, like the harley riders, care far more about comfort and style than actual safety. At 50kph the asphalt doesn't care whether you just fell off a bicycle or a motorcycle. Please prove me wrong. Please find me a pic of someone riding a bicycle on a road in a snell motorcycle helmet. I have seen plenty of them in the downhill community, never among commuters.
My point is that this new material will not be used to make safer helmets. It will be used to make lighter and more stylish helmets that, like all the others, remain only slightly above the absolute minimum legal standards. That's the market.