Originally Posted by
Flip Flop Rider
all good info, but what puzzles me, is why are we still using Styrofoam? (maybe this was addressed)
look at modern football helmets, which are designed for collisions and impacts. I get that bike helmets need to be lighter, but surely they can be more advanced than foam and a shell
Football helmets are wildly overbuilt for bicycle use. They're designed to survive literally dozens (hundreds?) of impacts per season, while bike helmets hopefully won't see any impact during their life-span. They also cost several times the price of your average bike helmet. Foam is not just weight effective, it's extremely cost-effective. Other than the fact that people associate foam with cheap and disposable items, why would you want to make bike helmets hotter, heavier and more expensive?
Virginia Tech first got into the helmet testing business on football, nowhere have they suggested that redesigning bike helmets to be built more like football helmets is ideal.