alt Hacker News> And turns out Virgina Tech does a bunch of helmet impact testing and maintains a ranking list https://www.helmet.beam.vt.edu/
Thanks for sharing. Interesting to see my Giro (with MIPS) has... 3 stars. Hmmm.
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Scoundreller • yesterday at 9:35 PM
MIPS is a liner that makes the same helmet a bit better.
A crappy helmet with MIPS is a slightly less crappy helmet that may still be worse than a great non-MIPS helmet.
Like upgrading a 1960 motor vehicle death trap’s 2 point seat belts to 3 point. It’ll help, but it’s still a death trap.
carabiner • yesterday at 9:17 PM
I'm pretty convinced mips is just marketing. Hair will do the same thing. That's why in rock climbing world, petzl hasn't even bothered with it when they're usually very forward thinking about their designs (first company to do side impact testing).
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Fwiw they changed their ranking system a year or two ago in a way that moved a bunch of formerly 5 star helmets to 3 stars.
Too many helmets hit the old five star threshold, so to differentiate it's now based on relative performance (the x% best helmets get 5 stars) instead of static thresholds.