Type I protects the crown. Type II protects the crown and the sides, and comes with a chin strap so it’s still on your head after the fall that matters. The industry has known this for years and mostly hasn’t switched. North Carolina State is now being paid to find out why.
The study runs through NC State’s Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, led by associate professor Alex Albert, funded by the Job-Site Safety Institute. JSI is a Raleigh nonprofit founded in 2014 by Builders Mutual Insurance, and says it has awarded $1.13 million in research grants since.
The number the study is built around
Roughly 200 U.S. construction workers die each year from traumatic brain injuries. That figure is cited by the sponsor and the announcement doesn’t name the underlying dataset, so treat it as the case being made rather than an established count. It is the case, though. Lateral impact and fall-related head injury are precisely the mechanisms Type I was never designed for.
Against that sits $15 versus $100-plus. For a 30-person crew that’s a $450 line item turning into $3,000, before you count replacement cycles and the helmets that walk off site. For a small specialty contractor running on thin margins, the decision is not about whether Type II is better.
Albert’s earlier finding is the more uncomfortable one
Prior research by Albert found that workers were largely not aware of the distinction between Type I and Type II at all. That reframes the problem. If the people wearing the equipment don’t know the difference, the cost objection is being made on their behalf by someone who has never had to explain it to them, and the adoption question is a communication failure before it’s a budget one.
Who’s in it
Comer Construction in Forest Hill, Maryland is running a pilot on active jobsites, with company president Susie Comer participating. Anderson Moore Kitchen & Bath of Winston-Salem is a small-business participant; its vice president Erik Anderson chairs the JSI board. Jodi Vedelli, chief strategy officer at Builders Mutual, is the insurer’s lead on it.
The deliberate small-business focus is the right call and worth saying out loud: the firms that can least absorb a sevenfold equipment cost increase are the firms where most construction fatalities happen.
One disclosure belongs in any coverage of this. Builders Mutual insures contractors and has a direct commercial interest in whether they adopt equipment that reduces head-injury claims. That doesn’t invalidate the research. It does mean the findings should be read alongside who paid for them.
There are no findings yet. The study is running, not concluded, and the useful thing to watch is whether it produces a number for what Type II adoption actually costs a 20-person contractor over three years. Nobody has published that.
Source: Construction Dive, 2026-09-24.