BHSI

Documents on the CPSC Bicycle Helmet Standard

Summary: Our collection of documents related to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s bicycle helmet standard.

The official designation for the standard is “16 CFR Part 1203”

CPSC has a clear and understandable summary of the bike helmet regulations on their website. It is the best place to start to get familiar with the testing requirements and how their standard is applied.

Here is the official list of CPSC accredited test labs Some labs outside the US were removed in 2026.

The GovInfo site has a legal copy of the standard, as it appeared in the Federal Register in 1998, with all the formal language. Since then it has been modified only once, with a letter to manufacturers interpreting the language on projections.

For additional historical background if you need it, CPSC put up the full briefing package that was prepared for the Commissioners to aid in making the decision on adopting their helmet standard. It may be useful if you are trying to understand how the standard came into being. We have a link below to the documents we saved at the time. At one time you could find the documents in five sections of a FOIA request. They were in Adobe .pdf format. We do not see them any more on the web, but we have them below.

BHSI’s Collection

We have on our server a number of documents collected as the Consumer Product Safety Commission was developing its standard.

• The final helmet standard as a .pdf file.
  
  
• The final standard as text in html.
  
  
• A letter modifying that standard with an interpretation.
  
  
• The regulation summary mentioned above.
  
  
• The law that forced the Commission to develop a bicycle helmet standard.
  
  
• CPSC’s Supplementary Material for briefings on that draft.
  
  
• Our formal comments on the draft.
  
  
• Our April, 1995, comments on what we thought it still needed
  
  
• Our 1996 comments on adding reflectivity and lowering the impact fail criterion for toddler helmets to 250g.
  
  
• The third and final draft, approved on February 5, 1998.
  
  
• A letter from CPSC on how they will enforce the standard.
  
  
• How CPSC can act to replace a non-working voluntary standard with a law..
  
  
• A page of photos of the CPSC helmet test lab.
  
  
• How to Send a Defective Helmet to CPSC
  
  

Our page on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008.

Our page on Reporting product safety problems to CPSC.

This page was last modified: