Helmets are a common sight on roads and mountains around the globe. Thanks to a mixture of technology, information, behavioral safety change and regulation. Helmets will often look the same, but they are not all created equal.
POC helmets are worldwide known for their top notch quality. The award-winning helmets balance the primary need for optimal safety with essential performance requirements, such as weight, ventilation, comfort or aerodynamics.
POC's mission is to ‘protect lives and reduce the consequences of accidents for athletes and anyone inspired to be one’ "It hurts when you break a bone, but in most cases it will eventually heal. Damaging the brain is a different prospect altogether and central to our wellbeing is what’s inside our head."
A team of obsessive POC engineers works hard to create the necessary protection from different types of impact: linear, oblique or a mix of both. They all require helmets that will protect in a multitude of ways, such as: reducing rotational friction with the design and material used in the shell; creating a precise liner density to absorb specific impacts; creating enhanced materials to compress at different speeds and impacts; fusing advanced materials within materials; creating multi impact materials; or, when needed, inventing completely new technology to fit into a helmet.
Helmets have to achieve international certification standards to be legal and sold on to a consumer, the most common are the European, American and Australian standards. Each one is slightly different and, e.g. even if an American standard is not legal to sell Europe, and vice versa, they are all based on high safety standards.
Developing a structurally optimized helmet requires testing on multiple zones across the helmet surface to fully appreciate what is happening at each point of impact, not just a single impact zone. This information is then analyzed and considered by in house engineers to assess what might improve the helmet even further, such as adding density or volume in one area of the helmet versus another.