Why Lazer Goes Further to Protect Against Real-World Crashes
At Lazer world headquarters, one of the most important pieces of equipment isn’t used to build helmets, it’s used to destroy them. The in-house drop tower is the final proving ground for every Lazer helmet, designed to push performance and protection far beyond minimum certification requirements.
Standing five meters (16.5 feet) tall, the Lazer drop tower can replicate nearly any real-world crash scenario. By simulating different impact speeds, angles, and surfaces, the testing process provides designers and engineers with critical data to validate and continually improve helmet protection.
The Drop Tower: Where Helmets Are Put to the Test
The drop tower process is precise and repeatable. A helmet is mounted onto an adjustable carriage, rotated to a specific impact angle, and paired with a chosen anvil to replicate a particular surface. A mannequin headform is then raised along the vertical rail to achieve the required impact velocity.
Once the safety cage is secured, the helmet is dropped. Sensors capture detailed data, which is analyzed and used to refine the design. The process is repeated across multiple orientations, speeds, and surfaces again and again until Lazer’s engineers are confident the helmet meets their uncompromising goals.
Meeting and Surpassing Global Helmet Safety Standards
Testing a bicycle helmet for certification is a demanding and time-intensive process, but Lazer approaches it with absolute seriousness. Every Lazer helmet not only meets global safety standards, but it also exceeds them.
Here’s a closer look at the primary bicycle helmet certifications:
- CE Helmet Safety Standard: The European safety standard evaluates a helmet’s ability to protect against direct impacts. Testing focuses on preventing skull fractures and severe head injuries from straight-line impacts.
- CPSC Helmet Safety Standard: The U.S. standard, regulated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, ensures helmets can reduce the risk of skull fractures and serious head trauma in direct impact scenarios.
- AS Helmet Safety Standard: The Australian and New Zealand standard is the most stringent of the three, testing protection against catastrophic injury from direct impacts under controlled conditions.
In short, all major standards evaluate a helmet’s ability to absorb direct impacts, resist penetration, and maintain secure strap retention. Every Lazer helmet meets and surpasses each of these requirements.
Why Direct Impact Testing Isn’t Enough
Real-world bicycle crashes rarely involve purely straight-line impacts. While certification standards focus on direct blows, many crashes generate dangerous rotational forces as the head contacts the ground at speed.
These oblique impacts can cause rapid deceleration and rotational motion of the brain, which are forces that are closely linked to traumatic brain injuries. That’s why Lazer goes beyond certification testing to examine how helmets respond to rotational impact scenarios.
Using the drop tower, engineers analyze both direct and angled impacts to validate whether a helmet delivers comprehensive protection. This commitment to deeper testing led directly to the development of Lazer KinetiCore technology, designed to manage both linear and rotational forces during a crash.
KinetiCore: Protection Beyond Certification
The drop tower isn’t just used to pass CE, CPSC, and AS standards, it’s a critical tool in the development of KinetiCore. This groundbreaking helmet technology helps dissipate rotational energy, reducing the forces transmitted to the brain during angled impacts.
By addressing impact types that certifications don’t yet test for, KinetiCore represents Lazer’s commitment to advancing helmet safety beyond today’s minimum requirements.
Beyond Impact Testing: Advanced Helmet Design
Lazer’s safety development doesn’t stop at physical testing. Engineers also rely on advanced computer modeling, including Finite Element Analysis (FEA), to predict helmet behavior early in the design process.
This approach allows the team to understand stress distribution, energy absorption, and material performance before manufacturing begins, enabling smarter design decisions and pushing safety boundaries beyond what traditional testing alone can achieve.
Through this modeling, Lazer has optimized the use of EPS foam, a material that delivers excellent impact absorption, performs reliably across temperature extremes, and allows efficient, responsible mass production. These design choices help ensure each new generation of Lazer helmets is safer and more refined than the last.
Wrapping Up
For Lazer, passing certification tests isn’t the finish line, it’s the starting point. By combining rigorous in-house testing, advanced computer modeling, and innovative technologies like KinetiCore, Lazer is committed to creating some of the safest helmets on the road and trail. No shortcuts. No compromises.
