An Assessment of Sikh Turban’s Head Protection in Bicycle Incident Scenarios

Xiancheng Yu, Gurpreet Singh, Amritvir Kaur, Mazdak Ghajari

Annals of Biomedical Engineering, 2024

Abstract

Due to religious tenets, Sikh population wear turbans and are exempted from wearing helmets in several countries. However, the extent of protection provided by turbans against head injuries during head impacts remains untested. One aim of this study was to provide the first-series data of turbans' protective performance under impact conditions that are representative of real-world bicycle incidents and compare it with the performance of bicycle helmets. Another aim was to suggest potential ways for improving turban's protective performance. We tested five different turbans, distinguished by two wrapping styles and two fabric materials with a size variation in one of the styles. A Hybrid III headform fitted with the turban was dropped onto a 45 degrees anvil at 6.3 m/s and head accelerations were measured. We found large difference in the performance of different turbans, with up to 59% difference in peak translational acceleration, 85% in peak rotational acceleration, and 45% in peak rotational velocity between the best and worst performing turbans. For the same turban, impact on the left and right sides of the head produced very different head kinematics, showing the effects of…

Cite as (BibTeX)

@article{yu-2024-an-assessment-of-sikh,
  title={An Assessment of Sikh Turban’s Head Protection in Bicycle Incident Scenarios},
  author={Xiancheng Yu and Gurpreet Singh and Amritvir Kaur and Mazdak Ghajari},
  journal={Annals of Biomedical Engineering},
  year={2024},
  doi={10.1007/s10439-023-03431-7}
}