Expect more from your helmet: development of a helmet to prevent broken necks in head-first impact

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The PIVOT Protection System is an add-on mechanism that can be added to existing helmets that helps protect the user's cervical spine upon impact. Individuals participating in extreme sports such as motocross, BMX, and mountain biking are increasingly susceptible to head-on impacts at high speeds. The orientation of the user's body upon impact can drastically change the mode of injury, with the most dangerous orientation being a slight flexion in the neck. This mode of impact applies a direct axial load on the spine and can result in life-altering injuries such as quadriplegia. That being said, the risk of these injuries can be greatly reduced if the head and neck are rotated out of this vulnerable orientation upon impact; this is exactly what the PIVOT Protection System does. By using a two shell design and mechanism that rotates the inner shell and head with respect to the outer shell. Multiple prototypes have been created and fit to commercial downhill mountain biking helmets. Preliminary testing has shown promising results including decreases in the load on the spine by over 40% and a corresponding decrease in the impact the head feels. No protection system like PIVOT exists on the market today. Other companies such as MIPS (Multi Impact Protection System) have taken a similar approach to solve a very different problem; that being brain injury. MIPS's system allows for the relative motion of the head in all directions with respect to the helmet. In order for the system to function, a significant component of the impact vector must be acting parallel to the impact surface, thus inducing rotation. If the impact vector is primarily axial (that is, acting perpendicular to the impact surface) the MIPS system simply cannot provide rotational motion. This renders the MIPS system (and others like it) ineffective in the compressive axial impacts that can cause spinal cord injury.