Goggle Strength?

[iceman]

Never seen this discussed, it just ocurred to me while thinking about tree skiing with my kid. Are goggles ever rated for strength or safety? Is there any way to know what brand/model might protect your eyes (from objects) more than other makes? Like I said, just wondering.

[cj001f]

There is an ANSI volunteer standard Z87.1 that covers eyewear impact protection. Oakley advertises some of their goggles as meeting the standard, other manufacturers probably have compliant goggles as well.

[Big E]

I don't know if it's still on their site, but Oakley also used to have a Flash-type thing on how they test their glasses. At one point, they had the glasses on a "surrogate head" and then used this medieval-torture-device-looking thing that just rammed two sharp points into the glasses damn hard. They had a hi-res, hi-frame-rate camera on the lenses and you could see them absorb the impact, deform, and then snap back with no damage. Pretty cool actually.

I think if you google this, you'll find something. I remember seeing some in-depth testing done by a trade magazine for pilots that looked at this as well as the optics.

(Not sure what you'll find on goggles as opposed to glasses)

[iceman]

Thanks for the info, I'll look into it.

[The Jackamo]

i actually took a tour of the oakley factory and was given a chance to test the strength of their goggle lenses. the first test shot a 10 gram ball bearing at the lens at about 200mph; this was deflected and didn't go through the lens. the second test took a one pound metal rod and dropped it from a distance of 1 meter from the lens; didn't go through at all. as far as safety goes, i'd say oakley is a good bet.