Looking for a new helmet that offers high-speed protection? The new Snell M2025D and M2025R standards are about to show up on production helmets, as the certification labels have been shipped out to manufacturers.
Every few years, the Snell Foundation updates its helmet certification standards. Originally, there was only a single Snell standard but now there are two. Snell says this is because the EU’s new ECE R 22.06 standard “appears to be incompatible with previous Snell standards for motorcycle headgear.” This is the reason for the M2025R standard. Snell says M2025R is a more general standard (think: day-to-day street riding), and helmets with this standard should meet ECE R 22.06 as well as DOT and JIS standards. Don’t think this means you’re unsafe; the foundation says “Snell will be proud to recommend helmets meeting M2025R to riders everywhere with the same confidence that we recommend helmets meeting M2020D and M2025D.”
Snell says the M2025D standard is in line with the foundation’s previous guidelines when it had a single standard that was considered the stamp of excellence, particularly for racing.
What has changed for 2025?
Snell says very little is updated for this year. You can see the final draft for the M2025 D standard here; the final draft for the M2025 R standard is here. The nitty-gritty of the changes is explained below:
For the most part, these finalized M2025D and M2025R remain unchanged from M2020D and M2020R however they both also include a new set of oblique impact tests in addition to the previous requirements. These oblique impact testsare the same for both M2025D and M2025R and are similar to those called out in FIM FRHPhe#1 and in ECE R22-06. The test head forms are to be treated with the same silicone coating prescribed in FIM FRHPhe#1. The impact surface is flat and tilted at 45° and is faced with 80 grit paper. Two helmets are tested at lab ambient in up to three impacts each with a drop velocity of 8.0 m/sec. The head form is oriented with its Z axis pointing straight down. The test technician selects the orientation about that Z axis for each impact. The magnitude of the rotational acceleration must not exceed 10000 radians per second-squared; this value has been increased from 9000 radians per second-squared which had beenproposed in the earlier drafts. The calculated Brain Injury Criterion (BrIC) still must not exceed 0.78.
Got that? It probably won’t make much difference to 99 percent of us, but at least you know Snell is still working to keep your brain safe.
