Claire Baker, Zhuoxiaoyue Wang, Lucas Low, Emily Ashworth, Mark Wilson, David Sharp, Nils Lübbe, Shiyang Meng, Mazdak Ghajari
Traffic Safety Research, 2026
Helmets
Facial impacts in motorcycle incidents
New test methods for protecting against facial and basilar skull fractures.
Facial impacts in cycle, motorcycle, and e-scooter incidents can cause brain injuries and complex fractures with life-changing consequences. Existing motorcycle helmet tests prescribe minimal testing of facial impact protection, due to lack of and evidence-base head impact conditions. We are designing new test methods using in-depth, real-world crash data to address this gap.
Full-face helmets provide the most effective protection against head impacts in motorcycle collision. However, existing safety standards lack a comprehensive evidence-base of real-world head impact conditions, and therefore suffer from gaps in their assessment of injury protection. One key shortcoming we have aim to bridge is the minimal testing of facial impacts, to mitigate scenario-based injuries such as basilar skull fracture.
We analysed the cost-free Road Accident In-Depth Studies (RAIDS) database to better understand the prevalence of different head impact locations and the resulting injuries. Furthermore, the information in the RAIDS database guided computational reconstructions of real-world cases, to provide insight into head impact conditions and injury mechanisms. We then developed a pipeline which conducts an uncertainty analysis of the reconstructions, extracts the kinematics of the head impact, and leverages a clustering approach to determine representative impact conditions which define a helmet test method.
Our analysis found that 58.7% of motorcycle head impacts involved the facial area. The reconstruction work to define facial impact test methods has produced a paper currently under review with another to follow. It has also attracted pump-priming by TBI-REPORTER, enabling ongoing work to pilot a motorcycle helmet head impact safety rating.
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