In skiing, in order to protect the knees from injury, skiers will wear knee pads to protect their knees. So do skiers need a helmet?
The answer is: Skiing requires a helmet.
As an important protection for skiing, ski helmets can protect skiers from the impact of external forces on their heads when they fall, and at the same time protect their heads from being hit by hard objects. In many cases, helmets It can save a skier's life, so we can't pay too much attention to ski helmets. On this point, the American people have a deeper understanding in the past twenty years.
In December 1997, Michael Kennedy, the nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, hit a large tree while playing ski rugby with other family relatives in the Aspen Mountains of Colorado and died of serious injuries. He was not wearing a helmet or any other safety equipment.
In that snow season, 300,000 ski helmets were sold in the United States. In the following ten years, as celebrities suffered skiing injuries from time to time, the sales of ski helmets increased rapidly. Annual sales in the United States have exceeded four times that of the 1998/99 snow season. In 2015, 1.3 million helmets were sold, with sales reaching $120 million.
According to statistics from the United States Ski Association, in the 2014/15 snow season, 78% of Americans wore helmets when skiing. This number was only 25% when statistics were first collected in 2002. Following this growing trend, within the next five years, all American skiers will be wearing helmets.
With the popularity of skiing, we Chinese people are paying more and more attention to the importance of ski helmets. At the beginning of winter this year, the Beijing Quality Supervision Bureau issued a draft for comments on the "Safe Operation and Management Standards for Ski Resorts in Sports Venues", which stipulates that ski resorts should establish a management system for skiers to wear helmets. In other words, skiers entering ski resorts Helmets are required.
In fact, before this regulation was introduced, all regulated ski resorts also required this. Everyone has this awareness that human life is at stake. This time, the legal level has been strengthened, which means that in the future, if skiers have accidents because they are not wearing helmets, the management of the ski resort will be held accountable.
The question is, since ski helmets are so important, how do we choose a helmet?
1. Comfortability
A good helmet should feel comfortable but not Tight, if the helmet can rotate back and forth, it's too loose. Shaking his head left and right. If the helmet position changes, try a smaller size, adjust the size or use some thick rubber pads. Push the front and rear edges of the helmet with your hands. If it moves, the straps will need to be tightened.
2. Look at the safety certification
The United States and Europe have special ski helmet certification standards, namely ASTM 2040 and CE UN 1077. You can buy with confidence, and those that only pass the general Certified products need to be carefully selected and compared.
3. Look at the material
In terms of material, most snow helmets are made of PC, ABS or ABS PC composite materials. There are also some flagship high-end products of big brands that use carbon fiber materials. . The outstanding advantages of ABS are: the surface can be painted and spray-painted, and the aesthetic effect is strong. PC is the best impact-resistant plastic variety. It is only half the thickness and weight of ABS material, but its compressive strength and toughness are twice that of ABS. The disadvantage is that the product is easy to crack and has low fatigue strength.