“The current standards no longer meet the accident situations that we see every day,” said Dominique Pioletti, a Swiss researcher, on Franceinfo on Saturday.
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“Helmets are no longer suitable for protecting the brain”warns Dominique Pioletti, professor at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL) and director of the Orthopedic Biomechanics Laboratory, ski helmets, supposed to protect against skull fractures, are no longer suitable for current accidents: “The standards for current helmets are rather made for speeds of up to 25 km/h but the average speed of a skier is rather 45 km/h.” Blame it on more efficient skis and better prepared slopes. For the teacher, it is therefore necessary to create more protective helmets with new materials but “it takes a few years”.
franceinfo: Why do you always have to wear a ski helmet, even if it is not compulsory on the slopes?
Dominique Pioletti: The helmet provides protection from certain types of shocks such as low-speed shocks. It mainly protects against skull fractures. The typical traumas of skiers mainly affect the lower and upper limbs, but obviously the most serious traumas are those of the head. This concerns every year – according to the accident prevention office in Switzerland – 12 to 15% of skiing accidents. It is relatively important. These are figures similar to the figures in France from the association of mountain doctors.
Are helmets still adapted today to our way of skiing?
The standards for the current helmets are rather made for speeds going up to 25 km/h on linear shocks but the average speed of a skier is rather 45 km/h. In this situation, helmets are no longer suitable for protecting the brain, whereas in the beginning they were there to protect against skull fractures. We go faster and faster on the slopes because the skis have evolved, the slopes are also well prepared. Higher speed impacts become more significant and the other problem is that helmets weren’t developed to protect the brain. When we have shocks that induce a very high rotational movement of the head, we will have a movement of the brain in the cranial box which is extremely deleterious and induces very significant trauma.
How to better protect the brain? By creating a helmet with new components?
This is the idea of the work we do in the laboratory. The idea is really to try to reduce the speed of rotation of the head as much as possible in the event of an impact with materials that do not allow all the speed of rotation to be transmitted to the head. We are still developing these materials in the laboratory. It takes a few years. The current standards no longer respond to the accident situations that we see every day. It is difficult to change norms once they are established. The evolution of skiing has been much faster than the evolution of protective materials. We have arrived at a situation where the speeds are much too high in relation to the protection offered and we can only recommend the greatest caution to skiers.
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