Standards
Helmets must meet a defined standard to be certified for use in competition. Procedures vary from one nation to the next. However, as a general rule, the design standards are created by a standards organization that has knowledge of hazards in the field of activity, and then actual helmets are tested and certified by a separate Conformity assessment organization with testing expertise.
The testing standards in the United States and New Zealand are considered more rigorous than those in other nations. Independent testing in the United Kingdom in 2003 by the British Equestrian Trade Association found a number of "traditional" designs from the three most established and respected British manufacturers failed a series of tests indended to determine if a design provided proper protection in the event of a fall.
Read more about this topic: Equestrian Helmet
Famous quotes containing the word standards:
“Our ego ideal is precious to us because it repairs a loss of our earlier childhood, the loss of our image of self as perfect and whole, the loss of a major portion of our infantile, limitless, ain’t-I-wonderful narcissism which we had to give up in the face of compelling reality. Modified and reshaped into ethical goals and moral standards and a vision of what at our finest we might be, our dream of perfection lives on—our lost narcissism lives on—in our ego ideal.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“Men are rewarded for learning the practice of violence in virtually any sphere of activity by money, admiration, recognition, respect, and the genuflection of others honoring their sacred and proven masculinity. In male culture, police are heroic and so are outlaws; males who enforce standards are heroic and so are those who violate them.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“There are ... two minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system. On the one hand those rules of behavior which are valid according to the system’s ultimate criteria of validity must be generally obeyed, and on the other hand, its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behavior by its officials.”
—H.L.A. (Herbert Lionel Adolphus)