What We Know About Pikio Labs' Top-Rated Bike Helmet

Pikio Labs, a small Vancouver startup, has produced the top-scoring bike helmet in Virginia Tech's independent safety ratings, a design the company says was inspired by how woodpeckers absorb repeated head impacts without brain injury, according to Wired.

What makes the Pikio Si Oblik the top-rated helmet

The Pikio Si Oblik road helmet scored 4.61 in Virginia Tech's STAR rating system, where lower numbers indicate better protection and a score of 10.1 or below earns five stars, Wired reported. That is 2.21 points better than the next-best helmet, the Canyon Deflectr, which scored 6.82 — a roughly 32 percent improvement, according to Wired.

Why do helmet ratings now measure rotational impact

For decades, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has tested helmets only for direct impact, Wired reported. Research since then has found that rotational movement, not just the force of a head hitting the ground, can twist and stretch the brain inside the skull, raising the risk of concussion, according to Wired. The cycling industry moved on its own: the Multidirectional Impact Protection System, or MIPS, entered the market in 2007 and is now standard on many premium helmets, Wired reported. Virginia Tech introduced its STAR ratings in 2018, testing both linear and rotational forces. Only four of the first 30 helmets tested earned five stars; by 2025, 167 of 272 helmets did, forcing Virginia Tech to tighten its grading, according to Wired.

Who built the Oblik safety system

Pikio founder Daniel Abram has spent 18 years researching impact protection and helmet design, he told Wired. Abram studied mechanical engineering before moving into helmet research at Simon Fraser University, where he helped develop BrainShield, a system built to reduce rotational force during impact, according to Wired. He later founded BiaGuard, a helmet technology company whose patents and intellectual property MIPS purchased for roughly $1 million in 2022, Wired reported.

How the Oblik system reduces rotational force

Most bike helmets rely on a plastic shell over a single block of expanded polystyrene foam that crushes on impact. Oblik breaks that foam into independently mounted sections connected to the base layer at flexible points, letting each section move separately or detach during a serious hit, according to Wired. Paired with dual-density foam, that movement is designed to limit the twisting force reaching the head. "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," Abram told Wired.

What to watch next

• Whether Virginia Tech's next grading cycle tightens scoring again as competitors try to match Oblik's results.
• Whether the CPSC updates its federal testing standard to include rotational impact, which it has not yet done, per Wired.
• Whether larger helmet makers license or compete with the Oblik system the way MIPS became an industry fixture after 2007.

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