Originally Posted by Anonymous
In order to certify NOCESA should send helmets to independent labs. The lab should always be chosen randomly so there is no inclination to aviod a lab because of unfavorable results. Manufacturers should have to pay yearly for additional random testing of helmets purchased from retailers. Allowing manufacterers to contract labs is a conflict of interest.


Manufacturers in industry and in medical / pharma do the same thing contracting out to 3rd party labs and CROs. I take your points about paid 3rd parties having conflicts as payee to payors like with accounting firms; Arthur Anderson and Enron stuff. To your point these brands do pay to have quality control tests and either do it themselves or contract it out to 3rd party impact labs. The former I don't like either where Cascade or others do it themselves, as that seems like allowing MLB baseball players to be drug tested by their own union. Manufacturers also pay license fees to NOCSAE to conduct ongoing random testing and to randomly review the quality control testing at companies. This is what NOCSAE did in this instance with Cascade and Warrior. We all know now it wasn't really random at all and STX cajoled attention to it, but the point is NOCSAE did their job and fit their role here. If NOCSAE's captive lab in Tennessee is tainted by conflicts, the brands can go to other 3rd party labs to dispute it which Cascade did but then ICS -- which is not NOCSAE's impact lab -- also failed the Cascade R.

My guess yesterday was the only "fix" will be for Cascade to go back to NOCSAE with a proposal for NOCSAE certified AND certified fitted, and that Cascade have authorized dealers in the field trained to fit each helmet before it is considered NOCSAE certified. We know that the Cascade R when fitted straight on is certified. We also know that it is possible for the Cascade R to be manipulated to fit with a forward or backward tilt, and that Cascade R use is not safe or certified.

I doubt that Cascade is able in the course of weeks to fabricate and test out a new component for their helmet, and even if they could they would have to formally go through the NOCSAE approval status all over again and that is a 4-6 week process in the real case with the new component in the Cascade R. What is more likely is Cascade has proposed the fit certification proposal for NOCSAE to consider, and we will all know soon enough if that works or not. It works for football helmets...every kid who plays football has his helmet fitted by the organization or trainers at his school and it is also near impossible to secure a football helmet tilted. I don't find it a small coincidence that Schutt with their core experience in football didn't bring that design knowledge over to STX to improve how lacrosse helmets should fit and then be size custom fitted.

One thing is for certain, Cascade needs to get the R back to commercially viable AND design a new R that has components in it that will block non-confirming fitting soon as they can.