FIM BECOMES A MAJOR PLAYER IN MOTORCYCLE HELMET TEST DEVELOPMENT

FIM Press Release

FIM Racing Homologation Programme for helmets

The FIM Technical Commission was invited to attend a meeting in Brussels on December 5 and 6 at the headquarters European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Association, host of the longest-running European framework supporting trans-national cooperation among researchers, engineers and scholars across Europe. Erica Manfredi, Technical Commission Coordinator in charge of the FIM Racing Homologation Programme, attended the last meeting of the Transport and Urban Development (TUD) 1407 COST Action “Scientific and technical innovations for safer Powered Two Wheelers (PTW)”.

This COST Action, also called Safe2Wheelers, is chaired by Marco Pierini (Università degli Studi Firenze, Department of Industrial Engineering of Florence) and aims at bringing together PTW safety experts to acquire, unify and coordinate PTW safety research, and ensure broad dissemination towards PTW users, industry and public authorities.

The last meeting, organised in Brussels by Prof. Remy Willinger (Université de Strasbourg, Laboratoire des sciences de l’ingénieur, de l’informatique et de l’imagerie) consisted in a workshop on Advanced Motorcycle Helmets Test Methods.

A total of 12 presentations were given by international experts in order to progress towards harmonisation of impact conditions and head forms using adequate instrumentation and brain injury criteria. Participants in the meeting also included some road and offroad helmet manufacturers, such as Shark, Schuberth, Leatt and Koroyd. Efforts were pooled in order to find a common scientific consensus on the features of future motorcycling helmet standards.

The FIM Technical Commission is proud to have been invited to present the freshly published FIM Helmet Standard, conceived within the framework of the FIM Racing Homologation Programme (FRHP). The test procedure, and more specifically the new oblique test, was illustrated in detail, in the presence of the Laboratorio de Impacto from University of Zaragoza, which worked closely with the FIM for the creation of the Standard.