Welcome to Stockholm, Sweden — home of Mips, the world leader in rotational motion protection for helmets. In this PEZ-clusive behind-the-scenes tour, I take you inside the Mips global headquarters for a firsthand look at how they’re redefining helmet safety through science.
🏢 Explore their cutting-edge helmet testing lab
🧪 Learn how Mips tests for rotational impact and oblique crashes
🎥 Get insider access to the tech powering over 150 helmet brands worldwide
Chapters:
0:00 Smashing Introduction
0:18 How to Recognize a Mips equipped helmet
0:43 Why was I at Mips?
0:53 What is Mips
1:22 Why Mips Matters & a Real Life Saved
2:58 How Mips protects your brain
3:57 Into the Test Lab
4:39 It’s an Ingredient
5:37 What types of helmets feature Mips
6:00 Collecting Impact data to make helmets safer
8:17 Summary
Whether you’re a cyclist, skier, motorcyclist, construction worker, or just helmet-curious, this is where innovation meets real-world protection.
🔗 Learn more about Mips: https://mipsprotection.com
🔗 See more cool cycling news and entertainment at PEZCyclingNews: https://pezcyclingnews.com
#Mips #HelmetSafety #HelmetTechnology #MipsProtection #Stockholm #CyclingSafety #BrainProtection #BehindTheScenes #Innovation #HelmetTesting
[Music] well after watching the kind of abuse they’re putting those crash test dummies through at the MIPIPS test lab I am happier than ever that I in fact am wearing a helmet with the MIP helmet liner in it how can I tell well couple things it’s got the yellow dot right there that is the official mark of a MIPS helmet inside of course you’ll find all the protection that you need to have a safer experience should you crash on your bike so I was recently in Stockholm Sweden touring the MIPS factory and getting a much closer look at what’s going on inside the test lab i want to show you some of the really cool things I found so let’s get into it here we go boom now in case you are new to this channel or you have not seen my previous video on the MIPS protection system which stands for multidirectional impact protection system MIPS is a low friction layer that is built into the inside of your bike helmet or another kind of helmet as well i’ll talk about that in a few minutes and what it does is it allows the helmet to move around your head a small amount in the event of a catastrophic crash here’s why that matters so as I was editing this video I was talking to uh my friend Rob Leborn owner of the Armed Forces Cycling Classic a great race in Arlington Virginia it’s an interview with Rob on Pez um I’ll put a link to that up here you can check it out so I’m telling Rob about this video and Rob says “Hey are you kidding me i had a massive crash.” He says “And MIP saved my life.” I’m like “Are you got to be kidding me?” Well tell me more about this here’s what happened rob got hit by a car on his bike here is the bike as you can see it is completely destroyed broken into pieces this is a picture of the car there’s a big dent here on the hood that’s where Rob’s head went straight into the car and impacted the car all right imagine so we’re talking about a massive head trauma impact here all right now Rob was luckily wearing a MIP’s helmet here’s a picture of the helmet as you can see it is completely destroyed completely smashed you got to be asking yourself well what kind of damage how did that feel Rob what happened rob did not sustain serious head injuries in this crash in fact he did not have any head injuries at all rob sustained some pretty serious injuries to one of his legs but his head was protected and was unscathed he didn’t get a concussion he didn’t have any head problems afterwards or any head trauma afterwards and Rob completely credits the MIP’s helmet he was wearing to saving his life in this instance now here’s some pretty compelling evidence about why you should be wearing a helmet and even more compelling evidence about why you might want to consider having MIP liner inside so MIPS has been studying brain injury since 1996 what they discovered is that while your helmet is really good at protecting your head from smashes and crashes contusions and scrapes and stuff like that it’s actually not so good at protecting your brain from rotating inside your head now no two crashes are the same but most of them involve some sort of a skidding bouncing deflection type of activity causing your brain to move around inside your head and it’s this movement that can be the most dangerous thing when it comes to causing brain injury so they invented the MIP’s low friction liner which actually allows your helmet to move around the outside of your skull and reduces the amount of shaking and and movement that your brain has in the event of a big crash now this movement is only about 10 or 15 degrees it’s not very much but it is enough they found to significantly reduce the amount of damage to your brain in the event of a big crash so at their headquarters in Stockholm Sweden MIPS has set up a massive and very impressive test lab where they are smashing helmets all day long in fact they’ve done thousands of impact tests check this out 9 20075 tests have been conducted here in the MIP’s test lab and every time they do another test this number ticks over and it is connected live to all of this testing that is happening right here right now we’ve got 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 There’s about eight test rigs in here there’s probably more but this is where the bulk of the testing is happening now don’t be confused because MIP is not a helmet brand in fact MIPS is an ingredient in a helmet brand that you’d probably know and probably have seen around each MIPS low friction liner is actually designed specifically to fit within a helmet from a specific company there’s several designs that they’re working on uh and different versions of this i saw some of those when I was at the MIPS headquarters they include the traditional one that we’ve seen here that fits inside and moves around inside the helmet there’s another multi-piece helmet that they’ve designed that has a whole shell that slides around which we saw on display in the boardroom and they’re also designing and working on prototyping different kinds of liners uh right there at the facility i saw some of the equipment that they’re using and some of the prototypes it was actually really cool so there’s a whole lot of work happening at MIPS so that once you buy a helmet that’s got MIPS in it you don’t need to worry about what’s going on with that thing it’s already being taken care of now in addition to making helmet liners for the cycling industry my is doing a lot of work in helmets in other categories so check this out we’ve got of course Moto which is a natural of course you’d expect that there’s a hockey helmet up there any sporting activity that’s got a requires a helmet could use a MIP liner there’s equestrian and now they are also moving into industrial and construction applications back at the beginning of this video I mentioned I was going to tell you a bit more about what’s going on inside these crash test dummy heads so MIP is doing their best to estimate what happens to your brain inside your head when there’s a big crash happening now as you can imagine it’s virtually impossible to do testing on live humans on this stuff so they’ve developed an entire testing protocol and test lab to try and estimate what happens to your brain in the event of a massive crash so check this out this thing is heavy it weighs the exact amount of a real human head it’s heavier than you think here’s where I want to tell you a little bit more about what’s going on inside these heads all right so they are getting a test ready and every time they do one of these you got to make sure the head is placed inside the helmet exactly the same in exactly the same position as it was last time so they use some special tools to check the measurements as you can see there are markings on the head and to ensure positioning is correct and also you’ll notice there’s this tube coming out of here this is packed with wires because inside this head there are nine tiny accelerometers that actually collect data at over 25,000 times per second which is a lot every one of these impacts collects over 16,000 data points as part of their research so there is an amazing amount of brain mapping data mapping impact mapping going on here now you’ll notice here what’s happening is the technician places that crash test helmet into the unit it’s got to be put in the same position every single time so they check the position uh with some sensors here everything is captured with uh high-speed cameras and this camera is capturing an image of that helmet which I thought this was really cool this is called a ghost image they use it on a on a computer monitor to ensure that the helmet gets placed in exactly the same position every time for each one of these tests so that they can capture the data accurately when it looks good they ramp it up they pull the trigger let that baby go to the top and woo bamo over 16,000 points of data collected right there all right Pez fans there you have it a little bit of a deeper dive into the multidirectional impact protection system known as MIPS it was a great visit to their factory uh and their headquarters i really enjoyed getting a a much closer look at how they create this kind of safety and and incorporate it into a helmet uh in case you’re wondering do I wear a MIPS helmet i actually do i really believe in this system i have not fortunately had to test it with any kind of a crash situation but the system totally makes sense to me and I do feel safer when I’m wearing one of these helmets so consider that an endorsement from me if you haven’t tried a MIPS helmet then check one out at your local bike shop there is uh a brand that you will like and probably look great in that is using MIPS in uh one of their helmets so let me know what you think if you got a comment drop it down below uh always great to hear from the Pez fans out there uh and your experiences with this in fact this is the kind of thing that could save your life all right PEZ fans peace out keep the rubber side down thanks for watching