gbaker

We know that several of you have kids who are, or who will soon be, involved in motorsports and need an appropriate helmet. If you are in the market, be on the lookout for designs based on a recently completed project conducted by the FIA Institute.

Designs for youngsters have historically been scaled down versions of adult sizes, even though it has been known that the relative geometry and mass properties of the human head/neck change as a child grows. The resulting SAE paper abstract reads:
Andy Mellor of FIA was the project manager and most of the technical input came from American Drs. Steve Olvey and Terry Trammel, who co-authored the paper. I saw this paper presented at the last SAE Motorsports Engineering Conference, and it is some good science.

Today's announcement is here: http://www.grandprix.com/ns/ns19820.html,

and the SAE paper can be found here: http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2006-01-3656.

No news on availability, but one would hope an aggressive manufacturer would have these ready for next season.

chrisp

I've heard Bell is very far along with theirs.

Stacey@ogracing.com

Great topic!!!

I emailed Bell today. I will be looking for more info on this in the future.

Just curious to know how many people have children that do some sort of karting or racing?

ltc

My son has been racing karts for 4+ years now (80cc Cadets and 2 seasons in FR125cc Jr Rotax).

He has always worn an SFI K rated helmet (currently an Arai SK-5, the non Nomex version of the SA rated GP-5).

He also wears a Leatt GPX head and neck restraint rather than a foam collar; the Leatt is WKA and Rotax approved.

DrJupeman

I have two kids, at least one but probably both are about to get into karting. We go to our second school on Saturday. Two karts are probably not far behind. Thanks for this info, I'd obviously like to buy them the safest helmets possible.

BrandonH

Thanks very much for the link Greg. My driver is 14 now and a strapping 5'9" getting bigger every day, but when he started at 10 I worried a lot about appropriate safety gear. Helmet weight, for example, is vastly more significant for an adolescent than an adult. In recent years both Stars of Karting and WKA have adopted a few new guidelines for kids. The most significant is a mandatory breastplate worn in addition to rib protectors. There were numerous injuries and one death a few years back from steering wheel injuries to kids' undeveloped chests. I also made my kid wear a right arm hockey/lacrosse elbow armor for a year after he smacked his elbow against a cylinder head in a wreck. (he seems to have some minor but permanant nerve damage there) Karting suits are way behind motorcycle motorsports in terms of protection. Alpinvest is the best in terms of actually designing skid plates and heavy plastic armor on the exterior of the suit. Like Lewis we use the Leatt brace which is still fairly novel and unproven in karting but strikes me as better than nothing; and I regard a foam neck brace as 'nothing' in a kart application.

Like the rest of motorsports, safety gear in karting has a significant 'peer' component, with the added problem that kids are even more worried about being 'different' than adults. So I wish the sanctioning bodies would be more proactive about mandating safety gear. I suspect karting is pretty safe relative to bikes and quads so maybe the impetus is just not there.

DrJupeman

Any response from Bell?

BC

Listening in on this one as well, hoping my little guy can get into it at 6 or 7( just turned five now).

ltc

Perhaps Bell (and anyone else) is waiting to make an official annoucement at the PRI show in Orlando in December

http://www.performanceracing.com/tradeshow/

ltc

A bit OT, but everytime my son is on grid (Nationals or local), the Leatt gets a lot of attention and a lot of parents writing down the website......especially after a red flag incident occurs. As soon as a parent sees a "it could have been my kid", safety moves to the top of the list.

Stacey@ogracing.com

I did recieve a response from Bell's Toni Birch. They have nothing new to release as far as information on development or testing for children's helmets at this time. They did recommend the Star 500, it is not Snell rated but is SFI rated.

I will keep you updated when I hear more or from another manufacture.

DrJupeman

SFI has a child helmet standard, fwiw. Here's a link that shows the differences to the SA standard we all know and love.

http://www.sfifoundation.com/05-2003C.html

BrandonH

Thanks for posting. That's pretty interesting: basically SFI stating that they needed new standards because previous standards mandated a design that was too heavy in an unsafe way for young drivers. I always felt this was true and when my driver first started out, several tech officials commented on how heavy his Simpson helmet felt. I figured it was developing his neck muscles, but thankfully he progressed into teenage-hood without any dangerous incidents.

Craig 88

G-Force makes a Junior helmet that has a smaller shell than an adult helmet and three sets of liners to change as the child grows. SFI rated and weighs just over 2 lbs. $275 ( I'll Be selling them the first of the year ).