The most valuable paragraph I found there to keep in mind when considering around WaveCel and/or MIPS is:
> So far it does seem that measuring impacts at an angle matches real world brain damages better than the older standards of measuring dead-on impacts. That's what "rotational acceleration" means. Acceleration is just another word for impact. It doesn't mean your skull should rotate freely.
(I have no stance on MIPS or WaveCel beyond that.)
I have one of these bike helmets. It's marginally more expensive and marginally heavier than others I was considering, but I bike for exercise not speed so I don't care much about the latter. In terms of pricing, I figured it was worth it to pay a bit more even if there's a low likelihood that it provides an additional benefit.
But after I bought it I recall seeing articles that undermined the claims. I know they have one or two good papers showing efficacy, but I think it's not quite settled science at this point.
They use wavecel in mountain biking! It, along with mips, are the dominant technologies used in bikes where mips has a larger spread of implementation and wavecel is more solidly in the middle.
If you scroll to the bottom of this article you can see a comparison between traditional EPS, MIPS, and WaveCel helmets and excluding the weird airbag helmet the best MIPS helmets tend to do the best, but WaveCel tend to be in the middle of the MIPS pack. https://thomashansen.xyz/blog/best-helmets.html Interesting to see them moving into construction as well
An important element of hardhats on site is cultural. If you're a supervisor, you wear the brown phenolic one. $80-100, but you walk into a meeting, and everyone at the table sets one down.
If you're an electrician, a Klein one is a desirable choice. With the right stickers on it, such as "Electrician, king of trades".
And so on. What hardhat you wear matters, completely outside of safety.
If you are in a trade you buy your tools from whoever makes the good tools, and that includes the hardhat. Odds are the hats are all made on the same assembly line with a different name.
All this technology in sports helmets and hardhats is good, but it doesn't make a huge difference in concussion. Concussion is caused by rapid acceleration/deceleration of the head in a whiplash or rotational motion. A inch of padding can help, and very sophisticated padding materials might help a little more. The biggest thing helmets do is prevent skull fractures. But if you're a hockey or football player and get a hard impact to the head, the helmet is not going to stop you from getting a concussion.
>You can shake an egg forcefully without disrupting the contents. But experiments show that if you spin one hard enough, the yoke inside will rupture even though the shell remains intact.
Ever watch boxing? You can smash a guy's face in, break the nose and even the ocular cavity without losing consciousness. But hit the jaw hard enough from the side to whip the head around and they'll drop like a sack of potatoes.
I worked at HD Supply hardware for a bit - it’s a commercial oriented hardware store where prices aren’t even posted on the items. PPE is really expensive but companies just buy it anyway - because it’s in the budget. A “conventional” fiberglass/carbon fiber hard hat is already like $150. Cheaper than a claim I’m sure.
My only thing is I personally think eye and ear protection may be more “high impact” PPE to focus on. Surely hard hats are important but it’s less of a low hanging fruit than eye/ear - ymmv
Edit: also steel shank shoes/boots to prevent penetration from a nail
> A “conventional” fiberglass/carbon fiber hard hat is already like $150.
According to TFA:
> WaveCel hard hats cost $169 to $189, which is several times the amount for a standard hard hat and more than many premium models, including some with MIPS technology.
Fiberglass/carbon fiber are the high end models of “conventional” hard hats to which im referring. Basic ones can be as cheap as like $20. Style hard hats like ones that look like a cowboy hat are like $300.
Edit: “conventional” as being without any newer technology like wavecel
If the price for hard hats was $10k a piece, companies would still buy/rent them for their workers.
They're a one-time fee insurance against something that is both expensive and decently likely to happen.
It's almost impossible to work in construction for even a few years without getting one thing or the other dropped on your head. Screws, tools, or rocky substances kicked loose by someone navigating scaffolding above you may not usually be fatal, but they'd probably hurt and can take a worker out of commission for a time.
Based on what? If the helmets don't look goofy (e.g. the NFL Guardian Caps), are bright red and have the Milwaukee logo on them construction folks will wait in line to pay that much for a helmet.
Tradespeople generally receive PPE from their employer, safety procurement people will be the ones making the purchasing decision about something like this. I wouldn’t do business with a contractor that doesn’t provide PPE to their employees.
A skilled tradesperson costs about $100/hr in my area, $200 isn’t a lot of money when it comes to safety. Fall harnesses are hundreds of dollars, arc flash suits are thousands of dollars.
It is about 10x the cost of a regular hard hat, but lower insurance premiums could make up the $180 difference over time.
Could also be good for hiring if people see you investing in safety. I know I'd rather work for the company that's willing to spend a bit more on the safest equipment.
The company may or may not pay everything. I get a $125 shoe allowance (iirc, I haven't checked the policy in a while) every two years, but most shoes that qualify for the allowance cost more that that. Of course many years I haven't been someplace where I need to wear them, but i'm expected to have them should I every have to debug something that only happens in the factory. I wear.mine mostly at home, when I remodel I like to keep my feet.
If it works, there will be studies that proves it, EU will make it mandatory for companies to buy this kind of hat for their workers, the price will fall.
I cannot think of many things that reduce in price once government mandates their purchase. Seat belts maybe? Although I can't find historical price information on those prior to being mandated.
Why should we let the government mandate what we do with our own safety? I'm glad that the US is trending towards small government and fewer regulations, this is absurd.
> Why should we let the government mandate what we do with our own safety?
You do whatever you want to do with your own safety. Feel free to protect yourself anyway you like or don’t like while you are working on your own. Nobody is going to stop you.
Grab a sledgehammer and start “remodelling” your kitchen naked if you want. Stick your wet fingers into live voltage or weld with a safety squint. Nobody offical is going to show up to stop you. Not in the USA, not in the EU.
The regulations are there to make sure the tradespeople you might hire get reasonable protections. That people employed can expect to go home healthy and safe at the end of their workday.
Also on the flip side if you ever get hired to do some honest work you won’t get maimed because your employer choose to skimp on your protection to have more money they can spend on a marble kitchen countertop.
My father could wear whatever he wanted most of his woodworker/painter career, as he was a solo artisan. But when he worked at a carpenter company, the company had to give him ffp2 masks, pay him security shoes, a hard hat and leather gloves for him to work onsite.
I mean, any decent company should do that for their workers, and maybe they would've without regulations, but do you expect companies to always do the decent thing?
Direct link to that image (webp?): https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2022/09/08/hat-2_wide-6ae40...
WaveCel, the manufacturer highlighted by NPR, has a detail page about their technology: https://wavecel.com/technology/
They published a Biomechanics paper about this: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-021-02723-0