Snell Foundation was originally founded all the way back in 1957 first as Snell Memorial Foundation. It was founded after a tragic car racing accident that sadly resulted in the death of William Pete Snell, a popular amateur racer at that time. The leather helmet used back in the day wasn’t able to protect Pete from a severe head injury. It also showed the world how important a good helmet is.
After that unfortunate accident, some friends of Pete and some others formed a non-profit organization. And that is called Snell Foundation today. It has been working to create a safety standard for helmets and it indeed achieved that. Snell Foundation has been testing helmets since the foundation and they are quite unbiased. In fact, no boards of directors are representative of any manufacturers.