Helmet Lab updates its rating system for football and bicycle helmets

It’s now a little harder to earn a five-star rating from the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab.

The lab recently updated its helmet rating system to include new thresholds for bicycle, varsity football, and youth football helmets. According to the researchers, the new grading scale is simply the result of the helmet industry's growth toward performing better on the tests.

“Helmet manufacturers have made impressive strides over the past decade, and the improvements we’ve seen are real,” said Steve Rowson, the lab's director. “Just like vehicle safety ratings that raise the bar as cars get safer, we’ve updated our thresholds to preserve the meaning of a top score as overall helmet performance improves.”

The updated ratings can be found on the Helmet Lab’s website.

Since its debut 15 years ago, the STAR (Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk) system has been used to calculate a helmet’s performance. The lab conducts a series of impact tests and then then assigned a corresponding number of stars, with five being the best.  

Rowson said the lab had reached the point where the majority of helmets tested were achieving a five-star ranking. The rating adjustment will help differentiate most high-performing helmets and restore the rating’s original meaning as a marker of the top available protection.

As a result of the new thresholds, a number of helmets achieving a five-star rating in each area has lowered:

• Bicycle helmets from 167 reduced to 38
• Varsity football helmets from 33 reduced to 11
• Youth football helmets from 26 reduced to 6

“While the bar for a five-star helmet is now higher, any helmet earning four or five stars continues to offer strong protection and remains a recommended choice,” Rowson said. “Overall, helmets are simply performing better and consumers should still feel confident choosing any four- or five-star helmet.”