The difference between surviving a motorcycle accident or not depends on knowing how to select certified protective equipment (airbags, helmets, protectors, and apparel).
It's common to hear that speed kills, yet we see MotoGP professionals crash at over 150 km/h and emerge unharmed. This is due to the use of certified protective equipment. The use of these protective elements can reduce the severity of injuries in accidents by more than 90%. However, the market is saturated with poor-quality counterfeits that pass themselves off as certified protective elements. In this document, we will show a simple three-step procedure to verify the quality of a protective element and avoid being scammed by counterfeits that could cost you your life.
Without a doubt, the most counterfeited marking in the world is the European Conformity (CE) mark, which refers to compliance with community legislation on health, safety, and sustainability. This high rate of counterfeiting is due to Chinese manufacturers creating the "China Export" mark, which imitates the official European Conformity (CE) logo to confuse consumers with poor-quality products. The only difference between the two logos is the space between the letters; however, this difference is imperceptible. If a seller of protective equipment only refers to the CE marking, you should be alert, as it is very likely that you are dealing with a counterfeit.
Types of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)
Motorcycle protective elements are divided into two categories: The most important are life-saving, meaning those that protect vital organs from serious or fatal trauma. In this category, we find motorcycle airbags that protect the vital organs of the neck, chest, and abdomen, and helmets that protect the brain.
At a second level, we find those that reduce injuries but do not protect any vital organs, and therefore do not save lives, such as apparel, and upper limb protectors (shoulders, elbows, and gloves) and lower limb protectors (knee pads and boots).
Incorrect selection of a vital organ protector like an airbag or helmet can cost you your life, which is why it's important not to be deceived. Therefore, below we describe a simple three-step process to trace the certification process of the equipment: the three things that must be verified are: the standard, the laboratory that issues the certification, and the document.
1. The certification standard:
Due to their importance, we will focus on the standards for life-saving protective equipment, airbags, and helmets.
For motorcycle airbags, it is very easy to trace their certifications. There is only one standard created by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) for certifying motorcycle airbags, which is EN-1621-4. The EN-1621 standard has 4 chapters; chapter 4 is for testing mechanically activated airbag systems. Work is underway on standard EN-1621-5 for electronically activated airbags, but this standard does not yet exist. Therefore, no electronically activated airbag currently has European Community certification due to reliability failures in electronics (a high number of unwanted activations or non-activations in the event of accidents). The National Association of Two-Wheel Companies of Spain conducted a study of motorcycle airbags available on the global market, which is available at this link https://airbag.anesdor.com/catalogo/ . If you look closely at the catalog, you will find that only three brands in the world claim to have EN-1621-4 certification: AIROBAG, MOTOAIRBAG, and HIT-AIR, which are the three brands with more than 20 years in the motorcycle airbag market. The rest of the brands claim to comply with a standard called CRITT-AMC-012 or CRITT-AMC-013, which are standards with an energy absorption requirement a thousand percent (1,000%) lower than the EN-1621-4 standard. Due to their low impact absorption requirements, CRITT standards are not comparable to EN-1621-4 and are therefore not reliable.
This catalog includes some of the airbags known as ALIBABA, which are Chinese imitations priced at eighty dollars (USD 80) and are generally remarketed with brands as resold in different Ibero-American countries at 4 or 5 times their original price. These ALIBABA airbags claim to comply with the less demanding CRITT impact test protocol. If you are offered an airbag that claims to have CE marking or claims to have CRITT certification or any other certification different from EN-1621-4, it is possible that you are being offered an ALIBABA airbag.
Motorcycle helmets are the most counterfeited protective equipment in the industrial safety world, however, there is only one reliable certification standard for motorcycle helmets, and that is the mandatory technical regulation ECE-2206. Any other reference to helmet standards such as DOT (FMVSS218), or national technical standards from Japan, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, or any other country ARE NOT RELIABLE.
The entire global helmet market is governed by the ECE-2206 standard. Other standards are generally created for corrupt purposes in different countries to allow public procurement of low-quality products. The most perverse aspect in the helmet world is the DOT (FMVSS218) certification, because it is a self-certification system where no laboratory performs a quality evaluation of the products. That is to say, any unscrupulous merchant can put a DOT (FMVSS218) marking on any helmet in any territory outside the United States and nobody verifies its quality.
In summary, for life-saving protective elements (helmets and airbags), there are only two reliable standards: ECE-2206 and EN-1621-4. The rest are mechanisms of deception to sell low-quality products.
2. The laboratory:
As we saw in the previous point, only the European Community worldwide has structured and reliable standards for testing protective equipment. To verify that these standards are applied correctly, the European Community created a network of independent entities to evaluate product conformity before commercialization. These entities are known as Notified Bodies (NB) and act as evaluating laboratories in critical sectors such as protective elements. This network of laboratories is known as the NANDO network of notified bodies recognized by the European Community.
Not all notified bodies are authorized to evaluate personal protective equipment for motorcyclists, which is why it is important to know which entity evaluates the conformity, suitability, and quality of the system you have chosen to protect your life. Brands with a longer tradition of research and development and higher quality choose the best laboratories to evaluate their products under the most reliable standards. These laboratories have verification systems for the originality of issued certifications. Laboratories other than those authorized by the NANDO network to issue certifications or that certify an airbag or helmet under standards other than EN-1621-4 or ECE-2206 are not reliable.
In summary, a reliable manufacturer always boasts about their certification laboratory and product homologation. On the other hand, anyone who tries to hide the certification process, the standards under which it is certified, or the homologation laboratory is likely hiding some flaw in the quality or reliability of what they sell. If you are buying from a distributor, always visit the manufacturer's website to download the certifications for the product you selected.
3. The certification document:
It is mandatory to have a certificate of conformity for all individual protective equipment. According to European regulations, every manufacturer of protective equipment is obliged to visibly display the certifications and conformity approvals of their products on their website.
The manufacturer of the product you want to buy, or the seller, must provide product certifications or allow them to be downloaded directly from the website. These certifications have electronic signature verification mechanisms to validate their originality.
This simple three-step procedure: standard + laboratory + document, is the basis for effective traceability of protective equipment and avoiding being scammed with poor quality products.
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