Bontrager’s WaveCel material more effective at preventing concussions than MIPS
I’m going to comment with what seems to be the common sentiment here.  It’s really hard to tell how effective a helmet is at preventing concussions in real life.  So we&#x2F;they design a test of some hypothetical concussion cause, and lo and behold, their helmet is very effective in that test.  Note that this is a different test than the ones used to prove that MIPS was better than a styrofoam helmet.<p>The real story is that marketing probably has a bigger influence than science in this case.  Several years ago helmet manufacturers hit the practical weight limit for helmets with styrofoam and carbon fiber shells.  I bought a Giro Atmos over a decade ago and never needed to upgrade because the top of the line helmets were only a couple grams lighter, after a decade of “improvement.”  The manufacturers noticed that helmet sales were declining, and all of a sudden “new science” appeared with a theory about concussions being caused by brain rotation and MIPS technology helps prevent that.  How convenient that this appeared.<p>The dirty secret is that literally nobody has ever seen a brain rotate inside a skull and result in concussion.  It’s really hard to image a brain in motion (impossible with off the shelf equipment), so the brain rotation theory is just a hypothetical mechanism.  There isn’t an ethical test for blunt force trauma in real life conditions, and bike crashes are very rarely reported if they don’t send the rider to the hospital.  So the leading authority on product safety, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, doesn’t even have good numbers on concussion rates for cyclists.<p>The bottom line is that MIPS and this new gel layer came at way too good of a time for the helmet industry for us not to be wary of the science.  They can get away with it because it’s such an easy marketing sell- most people think their life is worth more than $250, so any helmet tech is a bet on the order of Pascal’s wager.  If it’s snake oil I’m just out $250, but if it really is better then I just saved my life in a crash.