How This Tiny Startup Built the World’s Safest Bike Helmet

For decades, researchers judged cycling helmets on how well they protected against direct impacts. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) still does, even though research shows the danger isn’t just how hard your head hits the ground, but how violently it twists. That rotational movement can make the brain twist and stretch inside the skull, increasing the risk of concussion and other brain injuries.

Not waiting for the CPSC to catch up, the cycling industry got to work. Multidirectional Impact Protection System, or MIPS, hit the market in 2007 and is now a common feature on premium helmets. At the same time, Virginia Tech turned helmet safety into something of a competition for manufacturers. In 2018, it launched helmet STAR ratings (Summation of Tests for the Analysis of Risk), testing beyond the legal minimum and measuring both linear and rotational impacts.

Only four of the first 30 helmets earned five stars, but by 2025, 167 of 272 achieved five stars, and Virginia Tech had to tighten its grading. That only drove competition and improved helmet technology. Suddenly, hitting the number one spot was good for business and brains.

Sitting comfortably ahead of the competition, with a 4.61 score (10.1 or lower earns a five-star rating; lower is better), is the Pikio Si Oblik road cycling helmet, featuring a new safety system called Oblik. Inspired by the headbanging, concussion-proof woodpecker, this new design has wiped the floor with the competition. For context, Pikio’s 4.61 score is 2.21 points lower than the previous best Canyon Deflectr’s 6.82. That’s about 32 percent lower, a massive shift when many of the highest-rated helmets score only between 7 and 10 points.

How has this relatively obscure Vancouver startup gotten it right the first time? As founder Daniel Abram explains, it “comes from 18 years researching impact protection and helmet design.” After studying mechanical engineering, he moved into helmet research at Simon Fraser University, where he helped develop BrainShield, a system designed to reduce rotational forces during impacts. He later founded helmet technology company BiaGuard, before MIPS paid around $1 million for the patents and intellectual property in 2022.

Most bike helmets use a thin plastic shell over expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam, which crushes on impact to absorb energy before it reaches your skull. Oblik takes that familiar foam structure and breaks it into independently mounted sections rather than one continuous block.

Each section attaches to the base EPS layer with flexible connection points, allowing them to move separately or detach if the helmet takes a serious impact. Combined with dual-density foam that absorbs direct impact, the movement helps to minimize the twisting force transmitted to the head. Abram explained how, “Rather than compressing material in one direction, the system is able to deform, deflect, and detach depending on the impact’s intensity, location, and direction, helping manage both linear and rotational impact energy.”

Other helmet technologies approach the problem very differently. The now-ubiquitous MIPS remains the dominant commercial system, using a low-friction layer that can move 10 to 15 millimeters during the first 5 to 10 milliseconds of an impact. MIPS Spherical uses two nested liners that rotate relative to each other, while 6D’s Omni-Directional Suspension (ODS) suspends one liner inside another. WaveCel uses an engineered cellular structure that flexes, crumples, and glides under angled impacts.