Blacksburg, VA — The Virginia Tech Helmet Lab is planning to enterprise exterior of sports and recreation to create rankings for safety helmets.
Researchers from the lab, which launched the primary soccer helmet rankings system 13 years in the past, will quickly launch an 18-month examine meant to assist set up the primary rankings system for safety helmets.
The new system will observe the lab’s five-star scale that researchers presently use for helmets in 9 completely different sports.
The lab says it would examine head influence and concussion danger in a worksite atmosphere to characterize circumstances related to these accidents in building by way of incident report evaluation and surveillance video. It additionally will conduct exams on commercially out there safety helmets.
The rankings knowledge will likely be out there on the lab’s web site when the examine is full.
Steve Rowson, director of the Helmet Lab, mentioned the variety of office deaths in building, which Bureau of Labor Statistics knowledge exhibits reached 1,008 in 2020, prompted his staff to flip its focus to safety helmets.
“Of all industries, construction has the most fatalities,” Rowson mentioned in a press launch. “Identifying, improving and implementing better head protection could be the difference between life and death.”
