It’s now a little harder to earn a five-star rating from the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab.
The lab recently updated its helmet rating system to include new thresholds for bicycle, varsity football, and youth football helmets. According to the researchers, the new grading scale is simply the result of the helmet industry’s growth toward performing better on the tests.
“Helmet manufacturers have made impressive strides over the past decade, and the improvements we’ve seen are real,” said Steve Rowson, the lab’s director. “Just like vehicle safety ratings that raise the bar as cars get safer, we’ve updated our thresholds to preserve the meaning of a top score as overall helmet performance improves.
Since its debut 15 years ago, the STAR (Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk) system has been used to calculate a helmet’s performance. The lab conducts a series of impact tests and then then assigned a corresponding number of stars, with five being the best.
Rowson said the lab had reached the point where the majority of helmets tested were achieving a five-star ranking. The rating adjustment will help differentiate most high-performing helmets and restore the rating’s original meaning as a marker of the top available protection.
As a result of the new thresholds, a number of helmets achieving a five-star rating in each area has lowered:
“While the bar for a five-star helmet is now higher, any helmet earning four or five stars continues to offer strong protection and remains a recommended choice,” Rowson said. “Overall, helmets are simply performing better and consumers should still feel confident choosing any four- or five-star helmet.”
A Statement from Virginia Tech:
The original goal of the helmet ratings was to distinguish between helmets in a way that is easy for consumers to understand. It was also to provide a framework that manufacturers could use to improve. Over time, that has worked. Manufacturers have used our test methods to design better helmets. We applaud that.
But when a majority of helmets earn 5 stars, the top category no longer distinguishes the very best. That’s where we are now. Consider bicycle helmets: when we launched the ratings in 2018, only 4 out of 30 tested earned 5 stars. Today, 167 out of 272 bicycle helmets are rated 5 stars.
Similarly, in varsity football (first released in 2011 and updated in 2018 ), 33 out of 35 helmets have earned 5 stars. For youth football (first released in 2019), it’s 26 out of 36. These are positive developments. Helmets today are much better than they were a decade ago.
But within the large group of 5-star helmets, meaningful performance differences remain. If all top helmets share the same rating, then consumers are not seeing those differences. The 5-star label has become diluted.
To restore the ability of our system to differentiate, we are updating the thresholds that determine star ratings for bicycle, varsity football, and youth football helmets. Five stars will once again mean a helmet is among the very best. Four stars will still indicate strong performance, and so on down the scale.
As a result of the rescaling, some helmets that previously earned 5 stars may now receive a 4-star rating or lower. This is not because their performance has worsened, but rather the bar for top-tier performance has risen. This shift reflects meaningful progress in helmet design and ensures that the 5-star label continues to signal the highest level of protection available. This rescaling approach is consistent with how the automotive industry updates New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) thresholds over time to maintain meaningful distinctions as vehicle safety improves.
The updated ratings can be found on the Helmet Lab’s website.
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