‘Proper’ Helmet Test
Once again I’ll start with a disclaimer: I’m not saying don’t wear a helmet. If you want the protection that a helmet gives then buy and wear a certified helmet. Obviously. Moving on…
Over the years I’ve attempted to use many dodgy helmet ‘alternatives’. I wrote a piece in Issue 8 of The Albion about a test I did on some of them, with a follow up article on their website which you can find here. In both of these bits of writing I was rightly critical of my dodgy test methods and I said the only way to be sure about how well something protects your head is to test it in the same way that helmets are tested. Practically speaking, this means using an accelerometer. Since I am currently bored out of my mind, and have access to an accelerometer, I decided to finish what I’d started.
After the Albion article, someone got in touch to tell me about G-Form pads. A bit of digging about on the website revealed that they were made out of something called Poron XRD. I requested some free samples and they sent me tonnes of the stuff in a range of thicknesses and styles, which I used to make some knee pads and then forgot about.
After stumbling across them recently I decided to borrow some stuff to build a proper helmet test rig in my garage, as you do. I basically wanted to prove to myself that wearing a little bit of padding, while not being as good as a helmet, is definitely better than nothing. Read on…