#326 Understanding Helmet and Safety with Max Strandwitz of Mips Protection

Love then marriage, love their marriage. Goes together like a horse and carriage. This I tell you, your brother you can't have one without another.

My name is Max Strandwitz, I am the CEO of Mips, and I am based in Stockholm, Sweden.

Yeah, I mean the story about Mips actually started already 25 years ago. It started with a very frustrated neurosurgeon that got a lot of patients on his table which suffered from severe brain injuries despite the fact that they were helmeted. He realized quite quickly after doing some quick research that helmets didn't always protect you from the type of impact that you actually face in real life scenarios. So he started to do a lot of research. He teamed up with the Biomechanics Institute of Stockholm, the Royal Technology Institute, which have a lot of biomechanical experts. He found two of them and they started doing a lot of research on how can you actually evaluate helmets and their performance in a different way. They quickly realized that most helmets are tested from linear impact, so if you get a straight impact to your head, but however normally you have some kind of tangential force when you are having head impacts and so on, and that's what they started doing a lot of research about. The first publications about Mips came out five years later, which was in 2001, where they started to have the first white paper publications about what do they actually want to address.

Fast forward, they started doing their own helmet first, that ended up in a disaster because of course they didn't know how to do helmets, so they got a lot of reactivation than anything to do with the project or product. They then started the strategy of having an ingredient brand. That's where we are today. We started in sports, that's where we have had a lot of success. I mean most people going out buying a bike helmet, there's no helmet today that knows about Mips and what we're doing. We have also been very successful in motorcycle, both off-road and on-road helmets and so on.

When it comes to safety and especially relating to hard hats and construction helmets, we have actually been disqualifying ourselves. We have like a lot in the industry, it's worth about... People are mostly getting hurt from getting dropped objects, especially the famous brick scenario that everyone talks about, that there is only falling bricks in a construction site. We believe in that story too. But of course, when we started looking into the subject, we first of all wanted to know what actually are the risks that we want to address. So we did a big survey together with a PhD from Chalmers University in Gothenburg. She studied accident statistics all over the world and actually said what are the key risk scenarios, what are the type of accident scenarios that we want to address. We looked into the data. If you take the data for the U.S. statistics and so on, you realize that the brick scenario is only about 16% of the traumatic head injuries or brain injuries, versus when you look at slips and falls you have 60%, when you look at moving objects, which can be both forklifts and so on but also steel bars moving across the side, you get another 20%. So we quickly realized that indeed there is tangential forces that needs to be addressed also in safety. We quickly accelerated the work and also did a lot of surveys and research on our own to really make sure that we can address the relevant injury criteria, and that's why we are here today.

Yeah, and I mean Mips does the technology inside a hard hat, not the hard hat as such. But of course when you look at the different standards that there is around the world, that they are addressing more the falling objects, dropped objects is what they mostly designed to do. But it's also very strange because sometimes in order to pass one standard, you have to fail another. So they are not even addressing the same type of things, or they're not testing in a generic way. And of course we see in a lot of the regulatory bodies that we said that now people are actually uniting under one way to look at hard hats, one way of evaluating all that, and I think that will help the industry also going forward. Because when there is no standards, everyone tries a little bit on their own. I think the more united we can be in saying that these are the key risks that we want to address, then we can also bring the whole industry forward in a very united way, and that's what's happening at the moment.

Yeah, I mean if you look at hard hats as in general and so on, they are normally quite good at absorbing straight forces. So if you take for instance a traditional hard hat, you look at the harness system that you have inside and so on, that's designed to manage a straight force and so on, and they do that quite well normally. However, you are very lucky if you get a brick straight in the crown impact of your head. Normally you can get it on the side. Normally what happens, depending on the speed and so on of course, is that you get it on the side. You have some kind of tangential force. If it's not from a very high height, normally not a lot will happen other than you are exposed to of course a tangential force. A lot of cases you can actually go back to work then. Of course if you have more severe impacts, or if you slip or you trip in another way and so on, then of course you can have a much more severe impact and so on, which could lead to traumatic brain injuries or other types of head injuries and so on.

No, it can be, and I mean you have all kinds of impacts also in the construction sites, and everyone is always making a lot of correlation between velocity and force, and of course that's one thing. But also the kind of angle you hit the ground with could also be a part of that equation. So there is not only the high-speed impacts that is really the most dangerous. Sometimes a very low speed can also be of high impact, like you're just falling to the ground or you're slipping or tripping and so on without a lot of velocity, still you are introduced to a tangential force. And a lot of the impacts that we have looked at, we see actually already at the very low force you can have already quite severe impact. So even if you have an accident, and I have exactly the same accident, we will not have the same outcome. We are different age and of course different shape and so on, so all of that can also have an impact. So every injury is very much unique.

Yeah, so I mean what we try to do is we try to redirect force away from the head, and of course we do that with a slick plane technology. So when you are having some kind of tangential force, the worst thing that can happen is that your head gets stuck. When it gets stuck, normally inside your head your brain is floating in water. So if I move my head a little bit, you know that your brain will move a little bit, and that's okay because that's the way we are designed to work, and that's the body or the human anatomy. The worst thing that can happen is that when you get to that sudden stop, the force needs to go somewhere, and the brain is quite sensitive to that kind of force. What Mips tries to achieve is then to have a relative motion between the head and the helmet of ideally 10 to 15 millimeters to be able to redirect that force and avoid that the head gets to that sudden stop. So if you look in a close-up in the helmet, and you also see that in a lot of the hour testing and so on, you actually see that the head stays relatively still but the helmet moves on the head at that impact, and that's the kind of motion we want to create when we are redirecting the energy and so on. Everyone talks about eliminating energy, and if you don't want to win the Nobel Prize in physics, you know that it's very difficult to do that. That's why we talk about redirecting energy, because that's normally a thing that you actually can achieve.

Of course, we try. We cannot since you don't know what type of accident you want to have, you need to have a technology that is omnidirectional, so it can actually move in all types of angles and all kinds of directions, and that's what we try to achieve.

No, and I love that you say that. Normally when you have an accident, you should change your helmet because in most cases it's actually true. It's very seldom that you know that you had a big impact and actually the helmet is as good as it was before the helmet. And of course it's your head, so you want to protect it in the best possible way. At some lower impacts, of course with the construction helmets, they are sometimes designed to manage that lower impact and so on, but just to be sure, if you have an impact, do always change the helmet because of course you can never be certain. And why take a risk? I mean my math was very simple: the cost of a new helmet versus the cost of my head, the numbers are not aligned, so a new helmet is what's going to happen. And a lot of the helmets, especially in motorcycle and also what you see in bicycle, is normally made with some kind of foam that is actually designed to compress during impact, and of course once it has compressed, normally you can't use it. You see much more of those type of helmets also now in construction helmets and also in a lot of the harnesses. Then you never know exactly what kind of impact the helmet has been tested for. You don't know if there is cracks or anything in the harness system, so why take a risk?

Yeah, I mean, of course it depends on which type of risk, but of course there is things that can make the helmet worse and so on. Normally most of the big construction companies have extremely professional health and safety engineers and so on, and they will probably provide you with the best type of recommendation for that specific worksite. But of course there is always areas where you need to have regular inspections. You need to check your helmets. Normally especially in the U.S. there is annual inspection cycles and so on, that is not that common in Europe. But we really like those where you take safety seriously. You do inspect the helmet to make sure that you have one of your most important protective tools in the type of structure in order that you would like to have it. So of course, but every case is a little bit. There is so many types of works out there, there are so many type of exposures and so on, and normally the people in the industry are the experts on the industry. Just do your own research.

Most most of them there is. And I mean both from a warranty point of view, because of course this equipment is tested to really do the job when you have the injury and so on. And of course with all that comes of course the warranty. Nothing lasts forever, and it's really important to respect that.

Yeah, I think I mean first of all, where do you actually wear your helmet? Because of course normally you need to clean your helmet because a clean helmet is much easier to make the proper inspection and so on. But it's also to consult the best industry expert in your area because of course it all depends. But a clean helmet is always easier to inspect. Then of course it's also important that we see that especially in a lot of other countries where people wear normally a hat underneath their hard hat, then sometimes you actually prohibit the helmet to do the job that it's supposed to do. So of course it's also important to not wear the helmet without having the chin strap on. If it has a chin strap, it's there for a reason. Maybe not always the most comfortable one, but it's important to have the helmet on the head when you have an impact. Without the chin strap, you cannot always say that you will have that.

I was going to ask you who is the safest country when it comes to head protection and who's the least safest country?

I think in every country or every region, I would say there is normally a regulatory body. In Europe for safety, that is under standard core EN397, which is under a working group called CEN, which is under the European Union. They are addressing safety standards and actually revising the standards. And in the U.S. it's under the ISEA, and they are also working on addressing that. I think it's impossible to answer which is the safest, which is the best, because they're all designed to address different things. I think my true hope is that it will align so all the manufacturers are on the one standard that is constantly being revised about the relevant risk scenarios that you have in the worksite, the workplaces and so on, and then everyone can improve against that standard, not having two different ones. And if you're a manufacturer in the U.S., you do not have the same priorities that you have in Europe for instance, because I think that's productive in terms of what you actually want to address.

No, I think we are at least in the same playing field. I mean, we have representatives in Europe of course, and then I was actually at the annual meeting with ISEA a couple of weeks ago in Washington. I was super happy to hear the way the industry is being organized to address these type of issues. Then I think what really made me very happy is that when the helmet manufacturers go to that meeting, guns are down. They talk about general safety aspects. Everyone was extremely collaborative and they want to push the industry forward, and that really made me happy. Not talking about who is competing with who, at that meeting guns were down and everyone did their job pushing the industry forward, and that made me really happy.

I don't know, but I think it's actually Bullard who was the first company that came out with that.

Yeah, no, and I think I mean as a scientist, our work never stops. It doesn't stop in the sports helmet industry, it doesn't stop in the motor industry, and it for sure doesn't stop in the safety industry. I think there is a lot of different areas which we always need to address. Because sometimes the best helmet is always not the best helmet when we talk about the best helmet because it's not comfortable or it's too big or it's too heavy, so you actually have an impact on other areas. Like you have a very heavy helmet, then all of a sudden after eight hours you have a sore neck. So we look in a lot of different areas and really want to evolve in a lot of different areas. Like heat stress is a super important area. How do you make sure that you actually reduce the heat stress when you start sweating or getting hot in a helmet? Where does it actually start? You need to know that, you need to understand that to make sure that you can address it properly. We see a lot of examples where people put fans in some helmets, they want to talk about that without knowing actually what do they want to address, because sometimes you just pump the air around the helmet and you haven't achieved anything and so on. So that is an area for us that we really want to look into. Then of course making the helmet as comfortable as possible is super important. We really want people to wear the chin strap. If you look at the chin strap, a lot of people have beards, and if you have a beard, you perceive it to be a little bit itchy and so on. How can we actually make it a lot more comfortable? Also the neck retention system, are there ways to address it to make sure that you actually don't have any point pressure on the head and so on? So I believe that one of the most important safety aspects is comfort, ventilation, and so on. Because if the helmet is not comfortable or well ventilated, you will not wear it because it's not a product that is good enough to wear. So we look a lot into that. Then of course we also look into what are really the most important and relevant injury scenarios. Are there other areas that we want to address? We started like I said in construction helmets. We know that mining helmets are super important. Oil and gas is an area where you have a lot of exposure and so on. Offshore is one part of that. Logistics helmets and so on. So I don't think, or I hope, that our work never stops. The more that we can push the industry forward, the better it is. We spend a lot of money in collaborating with universities around the world because of course there can never be only one view. It needs to be a lot of different aspects that you need to consider. Also this challenge, it's a very big area. When you talk to the U.S. population, heat stress becomes a big issue. Also a lot on the emerging markets, fatigue becomes a big issue and so on. So you really need to understand that area. In Europe, that's not even a hot topic, sorry for the bad joke, bad phrasing. But it's really an area where they talk about other things and so on. So I think really relevant head protection in the areas that you want to address is important. A lot of the test equipment that there is today is only about falling objects. So we bought our own 90-kilo guy, he is a test dummy that we bought from the car industry. He gets a lot of beating. We drop him from scaffolding, and we will soon have a Christmas party. I think if we have a good show, also Dan, what's his name? What have you guys named him?

Yes, exactly. No, but for us it's really important to have that kind of experimental test to see what happens in a lot of scenarios. And that's why I'm so keen about the chin strap is that when you fall from height, normally in a lot of cases you hit your butt first. When you hit your butt first, normally the head goes a little bit backwards, and a lot of those scenarios the helmet actually falls off the head, and then you're unprotected. And that's an area where we learned a lot by looking at how do you actually fall, why is the chin strap so important, and what can you do to address it and so on. So a lot of different things.

Yeah, but it's a very valid point because of those slips and falls. If slips and falls are 60% and you are falling to the side, to the back, to the front, or whatever, the first thing that comes off your head is the helmet. And so it doesn't protect you. So I was going to ask you how does one pick a helmet? Because the biggest problem that I see or when people speak to me about hard hat safety is they don't feel it's like you said, it's not comfortable, it's not fitting right, so then I don't want to wear it, so I'm constantly wanting to take it off. Your objective with Mips and everything is to create a helmet that it doesn't feel like you're wearing it but it's still protecting your head. So how does one find that right helmet to protect your head?

No, and I think I mean the best helmet is the one that you actually wear. If you don't wear it, it doesn't matter how good it is. So it should be comfortable of course. It should also fit in your head. A lot of people wear the helmet on the top of the head, which is normally not good enough. So it should really cover a big part of the head. That's the most important thing. And then normally with the bigger construction companies and so on, you do get a short list of helmets. These are the helmets that we recommend. They have normally gone through a big inspection with the construction companies, they have also required test results and so on to make sure that it's a good helmet. I would pick one of those. And then of course certified helmets, certification is there for a reason. I hope that the certification standards increase and also make challenges even tougher in terms of certification, because it's about people and of course we want to address them in the best possible way. So I think that's the recommendation I can give you. The best helmet is always the one that is on the head.

Yeah, so today we have two American partners that we work with: PIP and also Ergodyne. Both have Mips helmets on the market. They will of course come more during next year, so you will see more helmets on the market and so on. So yes, it exists.

It's a lot of different helmets. Today we are doing in sports, of course climbing helmets, we are doing mountaineering helmets that they normally call snow helmets, we are doing also bicycling helmets, equestrian helmets, off-road helmets in motorcycle, adventure helmets, we are also doing motorcycle helmet, e-scooter helmets, and military helmets. We're doing technology for fire brigade helmets also. So a lot of different areas, but all of them have one common thing and that's there is some kind of tangential force. We would never just become a marketing sticker on the helmet. We always before we go into a helmet, we look at what are the relevant injury scenarios that we need to address and can we do that? For instance, we started looking into baseball a couple of years ago where we looked at a lot of the engineering scenarios that we saw. We were not that relevant because it was a different type of impact, almost like the woodpecker. You get the baseball ball towards your head and so on, and there was not a lot of tangential force. We said without that, there is no reason to be there, and therefore we actually said at one point we will probably also be in a baseball helmet, but we need to understand what is the risk we're actually going to address. So of course we spent a lot of time in our research. The company's engineers that is focused on what we're doing today, we have six PhDs in the company. We do about 1,000 tests per month, and that of course is really important for us. 12,000 tests in a year just to understand where we are today. So of course the company has been awarded with a lot of awards, like the engineering Nobel Prize you can almost say that, which is the Polhem Award in Sweden, which we were extremely happy to receive that, and a lot of other rewards. But our journey never stops. I am the CEO today, and at one point of course there will be another CEO that is pushing this journey forward because of course it's a great product.

Yeah, I would say you should always. Why take the risk? There is a lot of technology being developed at the moment where people look at what kind of impact you actually had to your helmets, both mechanical and non-mechanical technology, and so on, and I think that's for sure a step in the right way. But just having an inspection is always good to really see what actually happened. We see that also in a lot of sports where it's more important to win the match than actually look at what actually happened. And of course there are so many different scenarios which are not even involving a helmet where you can have head injuries and so on. My son plays soccer where you normally don't wear a helmet, and so on. He had had two concussions. The last one I had to pull him out of the pitch because he had no clue where he was going, but he was going to win the match. And that kind of risk scenario is always someone else to judge if you're okay, not you. Because you had an impact, it's not sure that you're okay. So I mean always go for an inspection, always do as much risk elimination as you can, because in the end it's your head. That's one of the most important things. How valuable you see your head, that's all it is.

No, I think I mean the thing that is really happening and especially in the U.S. market, when we were at the ISEA meeting, there were four or five end users, so there were people from Walmart, there were people from Clark's, and so on. And what I was most impressed on is on their search to always go for better equipment and so on. I think the whole American industry, the way they talk about having wanting to have safer equipment for the users, that gives me a lot of reassurance that we go the right way. Price is normally not the key issue. It's about understanding what you want to protect and so on. So I think the U.S. has probably come further than we see the European market. Europe is still a couple of years behind because it's still so much about price. Everything comes at the cost, but in the end it's your workers, and of course you want them to have the best possible equipment whatever they do. And I think the U.S. is a lot more advanced without caring about their workers and so on, and that made me really reassured that at least is going the right way.

Yeah, and I think also there the whole system about neck retention system, because again about comfort and so on. Nobody wants to have a hard hat that is too small, but also you shouldn't have a hard hat that is too big either. So I think there you will probably also see a lot of development over time where people are having more versatile retention systems and so on where you have less point pressure but also sits better on the head because heads size ranges is quite big. And you see that in all kinds of sports, but when it comes to construction, normally you only have one or at best two sizes to pick from, and then the neck retention system should do the job. Normally the neck retention system is only putting around your forehead and the back head, but of course the helmet sits on the whole head, and you need to make sure that you have solutions to address that also.

Yeah, I mean the heat is never good because of course heat stress is an important area, but also when things are getting colder, normally especially plastic and those type of materials, they normally work less or have less performance when it's cold outside. So I mean there is a reason why regulatory bodies and so on test helmets both for cold and for heat to make sure that they perform in any type of weather conditions and so on. So they are tested for that. But where you have the most challenge is of course in the cold test that you normally go through.

I'm not that good at translating into Fahrenheit, but it's really, really cold. Don't worry about Canada, so Celsius you could talk Celsius. Yeah, so normally you would test it for at least -20 and even further down below than that. So normally what you do is you put it in the freezer, and then what you do is that you need to test it within a certain period of time to make sure that it's still cold and so on to really stress it as much as you can. You can go down to -50 degrees minus and so on to really make sure that it performs in all types of weather conditions.

Yeah, no, I can only agree. I think it is so important. And I mean imagine when you go out, you see your kids on the bike without the helmet, of course you would be angry. Imagine if they see their father doing those type of things without having a helmet, I think they would be really sad.

I don't think I mean in terms of so to say, I'm really happy about the show and also what you talk about. I think like I said when I was in the U.S., I was so happy about the industry the way it talks and collaborates and so on. I think also having much more end user experience is also super important because in the end those are the people that are going to wear the helmets. If there are things in the helmet that is not good, I mean challenge the industry, ask for better or more comfortable helmets and so on, because I think that's also a very important area. We try to create our own reference groups and so on. We try to see if there's things where we can do in terms of sweat absorption in a helmet, cooling fabric, in terms of making sure that it's as cool as possible and so on. So there is always things to learn. So if anyone has any feedback on the Mips solution or other things in helmet, we are always eager to listen because in the end we do it for you guys.

Yeah, no, and I think I mean there is a lot of things about the neck and we have done a lot of studies on the neck also because of course that's also very interesting. The neck is fantastic in the way that it actually handles force and so on. The impact is that when you start isolating the neck too much at the impact, you can actually have an opposite effect when it comes to the head and the brain and so on. So you need to be very careful on how you do it. There are a lot of neck braces and so on around there, but also when it comes to heat, you add more things on to you. So of course I think and hope that there will be a lot of innovations also in that area. I'm not sure that it actually will be one piece, but hopefully two pieces where they are not counterproductive in terms of what they're trying to address. And then you also have other types of protection on your body. Normally what happens when you wear a lot of protection, you add a lot of weight. And of course if you're a worker wearing one kilo too much, of course that adds a lot of weight. So we also need to be mindful in terms of what are the key priorities to wear. And of course there is also a lot of airbag solutions coming out there, which could also be an area to address certain things. I think the good thing is that just sitting here and discussing it at least made me much more aware that there is so many things happening, and of course the industry is pushing all about safety forward, and that will of course also result in a lot of progress. In Canada for instance, we do a lot of work with the University of Ottawa with Lane Hoshizaki and his team. We have a research five-year risk research program with them, and there we are testing a lot of different things that we are not testing in Sweden, and so on. For us, that's super helpful to get insights from all over the world.

Yeah, and so far they have actually been more on the work on the equestrian, off-road, and on-road, and so on. Over time for sure we will also do work on more like workforce and so on, but in Canada we have not addressed that yet. But I'm sure it will come in the coming years.

Yeah.

No, I think we covered a lot of the areas and so on. Interesting discussion and so on.

Yeah.

Great.

Injury.

No, the concept of making things bigger and better. I mean construction is all about improving or creating things that was not there from the beginning.

I think there is still a lot of conservatism in the industry and so on that pulls the industry back rather than going forward. You see that in a lot of areas.

I do not actually curse. Of course I get excited about a lot of things and probably it slips one or two curses, but nothing that really came to mind. I'm not really a cursing guy.

I like cars, especially Porsche. Any particular model? New, old? No, I have a Taycan today, a fully electric one, which I think is fantastic. It's really nice to drive an electric car which keeps all the performance that you would have in a normal sports car. So of course that's my favorite car.

I've never been very fond of buses. And the bad thing is if you miss one, there will always be another one.

Yeah, I'm extremely into tools, so I like drilling sound and tool sound in general. I think that's really quite. If you ask my wife, I have way too many tools. I don't use them too often, but I collect them.

Yeah, I think I mean Bosch is really something that always stands for a lot of quality and also it lasts forever in terms of that. So I would say that is probably one of my favorites.

Yeah, I don't know if it's the right translation, but when you cut insulation, that squeaky sound is really something that metal going through fiberglass. It's a weird sound.

I would love to be a doctor. Having the possibility to make a difference. I come from the industry of selling ice cream and sugar to kids from the beginning. Getting into the helmet industry and actually being able to make a difference, that's really addictive. So I would say if I would restart my life, being a doctor would be something fantastic. They make a lot of good things.

Oh, there is probably a lot of things. I mean I would never be the guy cutting the insulation at the worksite. It's too itchy.

It would be fantastic if you say welcome, welcome Max. This has been a pleasure having you on the show. Thank you so much for sharing such valuable information. And I think you're right that we're getting better as an industry. As everybody, we're getting a lot better than what it used to be.

Thank you, Manny. Take care.