My helmet specs

[emptysea]

https://sharp.dft.gov.uk/

The SHARP site and this one too, https://www.crash.org.au/ratings.php lend weight to the view that safety and cost are not correlated. As I recall, the SHARP site shows a number of inexpensive helmets with very high safety ratings.

The SHARP site and this one too, https://www.crash.org.au/ratings.php lend weight to the view that safety and cost are not correlated. As I recall, the SHARP site shows a number of inexpensive helmets with very high safety ratings. Worse, all so called "safety" testing/ratings I have seen measure is the resistance of the helmet to the damage to the helmet itself.

I am not interested in a helmet that I can re-use after an accident, I am interested in a helmet that will absorb the energy of the impact instead of transferring it to the base of my skull, the anatomical locale where the injuries are many time more deadly than skull dome fractures. The rest of this topic should be addressed by a competent, impartial head-trauma surgeon, and since I am not one I will stop here.

The SHARP site and this one too, https://www.crash.org.au/ratings.php lend weight to the view that safety and cost are not correlated. As I recall, the SHARP site shows a number of inexpensive helmets with very high safety ratings. Worse, all so called "safety" testing/ratings I have seen measure is the resistance of the helmet to the damage to the helmet itself.

I am not interested in a helmet that I can re-use after an accident, I am interested in a helmet that will absorb the energy of the impact instead of transferring it to the base of my skull, the anatomical locale where the injuries are many time more deadly than skull dome fractures. The rest of this topic should be addressed by a competent, impartial head-trauma surgeon, and since I am not one I will stop here.
No helmet should be reused after an accident. It shouldn't even be reused if it is dropped on a hard surface. The safety ratings (from DOT to ECE to Snell) ALL measure damage to the helmet as you say, but also measure impact energy absorption. Beyond that though, an unrated helmet tells you NOTHING at all about it's relative safety. Even if I grant you your notion that safety ratings don't tell you about energy absorption (although they do), at least the rated helmets tell you SOMETHING about their ability to protect your skull. All rated helmets absorb impact energy. You may think they should absorb more energy and that's fine, but it's flawed logic to think that an unrated helmet is as good as an unrated one -- it could be, but you're just guessing at that point.