The Rules Are The Same. The Riders Aren’t

Every bike helmet sold in the United States has to meet the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) safety standard. Across much of Europe, it's EN 1078. Different names. Different organizations. Same mission: make sure a helmet can protect a rider in a crash.

These standards didn't appear by accident. They were built by engineers, scientists, regulators, and industry experts after years of testing and research. They establish the minimum performance a bicycle helmet must achieve before it reaches a store shelf. Manufacturers evaluate helmets for impact protection, retention system strength, helmet stability, field of vision, and durability after exposure to hot, cold, and wet environments. If a helmet passes, it earns its certification.

That's a good thing.

But here's the question worth asking.

Should the helmet protecting a 45-pound, seven-year-old be tested the same way as the helmet protecting a 200-pound adult?

Today, the answer is essentially Yes.

Youth and adult bicycle helmets are certified using the same core performance tests. The standards do not fundamentally change to reflect the enormous differences in body size, neck strength, anatomy, riding style, or the way children experience a crash.

No parent would expect a child's car seat to be engineered like an adult seat belt. Or buy their six-year-old an adult-sized life jacket and hope for the best. We instinctively design safety equipment around the person we're trying to protect, recognizing that children aren't simply smaller adults.

Yet when it comes to bicycle helmets, today's certification standards are largely the same whether the rider is a first grader or a fully grown adult.

None of this diminishes the importance of CPSC or EN 1078. These standards have saved lives and established a critical safety baseline for the entire industry.

The opportunity isn't to replace these standards—it's to build on them. As our understanding of brain injury continues to advance, so should the technologies we use to protect the people wearing the helmets, especially the smallest ones. The standards define the minimum. Innovation defines what's possible.