The practical problem with delegating the standards for helmets is the tendency of those standards to creep as new materials and techniques become available, and for testers to think up new ways to challenge those new materials, while the human head and the impacts it sustains lag behind just where they have always been. Years ago, Motorcyclist magazine undertook a round of independent helmet testing and proved, certainly to my satisfaction, that the Snell 2000 Certification was in fact such a difficult test to pass that the helmet that could do so was, in fact, less safe than many helmets which could not. The Snell 2000 test included at that time a steel ball drop test, from some standard height I don't recall, which would then have the energy transferred measured on the inside of the helmet liner; the problem being that the Snell test dropped that same steel ball TWICE in the same location. In order to make a helmet shell strong enough to pass that test, the shells became so strong that they passed a dangerous amount of energy into the liner - where you are keeping your head.
The high end of the helmet industry boycotted the magazine for years afterwards - no advertising dollars, which helmet makers spend a good deal on - after the magazine concluded that the less-demanding Department of Transportation (DOT) certification was, at that time, for the moment, the test that better indicated the use the helmet would get, and thus better protected the motorcyclist's head in that circumstance. (It also took years of fussing for the Peter Snell foundation to admit that particular test demanded a shell so resilient it was a liability rather than an asset in an average motorcycle crash, though they eventually did)
It came out just after I had purchased a pair, not one but two, new Shoei RF1000 full-faced Snell 2000 helmets, which I still have and use occasionally. I had always been of the same inclination as many motorcyclists - to assume that the Snell testing, at that time the most demanding test there was, delivered the best, safest helmet. This turned out not to be true. And now the government wants to make a similar assumption, that the testing bodies represent a standard for safety, rather than a standard for testing, wherein the two interests may be divergent at times. So there is some reason, IMHO, to be suspicious of both the standards themselves, and the drive to transfer the responsibility for those standards to entirely opaque interests in other countries.
