Helmets, price Vs protection......

[Moltenice]

I am not sure if this info has been brought up yet. I searched but didnt find anything so I thought I would post it up and get some reactions. Excess good info is not as bad as a shortage.

How good is your helmet? Will it actually protect your brain in your next crash?
These seem like easy questions, ones you probably think you can answer by reciting the lofty standards your helmet meets and the lofty price you might have paid for it. But the real answers, as you are about to see, are anything but easy.

Why the debate? Because if a helmet is too stiff it can be less able to prevent brain injury in the kinds of crashes you're most likely to have. And if it's too soft, it might not protect you in a violent, high-energy crash. What's just right? Well, that's why it's called a debate. If you knew what your head was going to hit and how hard, you could choose the perfect helmet for that crash. But crashes are accidents. So you have to guess.

A motorcycle helmet has two major parts: the outer shell and the energy-absorbing inner liner. The inner lining is made of expanded polystyrene or EPS, the same stuff used in beer coolers, foam coffee cups, and packing material. Outer shells come in two basic flavors: a resin/fiber composite, such as fiberglass, carbon fiber and Kevlar, or a molded thermoplastic such as ABS or polycarbonate, the same basic stuff used in face shields and F-16 canopies.

The shell is there for a number of reasons. First, it's supposed to protect against pointy things trying to penetrate the EPS—though that almost never happens in a real accident. Second, the shell protects against abrasion, which is a good thing when you're sliding into the chicane at Daytona. Third, it gives Troy Lee a nice, smooth surface to paint dragons on. Riders—and helmet marketers—pay a lot of attention to the outer shell and its material. But the part of the helmet that absorbs most of the energy in a crash is actually the inner liner.

When the helmet hits the road or a curb, the outer shell stops instantly. Inside, your head keeps going until it collides with the liner. When this happens, the liner's job is to bring the head to a gentle stop—if you want your brain to keep working like it does now, that is.

The great thing about EPS is that as it crushes, it absorbs lots of energy at a predictable rate. It doesn't store energy and rebound like a spring, which would be a bad thing because your head would bounce back up, shaking your brain not just once, but twice. EPS actually absorbs the kinetic energy of your moving head, creating a very small amount of heat as the foam collapses.


Tests:
We asked the major helmet brands sold in the U.S. to each pick one model of their helmets. We asked for two functionally identical helmets in the same size, medium or 71¼4. Why two? To give us a look at the consistency of the manufacturer's production techniques. Why all one size? To make sure any differences we saw were due to design and production differences, not random differences due to sizing. And we wanted to use the same-size headform in all our testing, again for consistency. We were also interested in learning as much as we could about different helmet constructions, and about how helmets built to different standards vary. So if a manufacturer made both fiberglass-shell and plastic-shell helmets, we asked for a pair of each. And if a manufacturer made helmets to two different standards, we asked for both as well.

Icon and Scorpion sent both fiberglass and polycarbonate helmets, all Snell/DOT-rated. AGV sent a pair of Snell/DOT-rated X-R2s and a pair of BSI/DOT-rated TiTechs. And Suomy sent the same model, its Spec 1R, in both BSI-rated and ECE-rated versions.

The stiffest helmets in the Big Drop test, the Arai Tracker GTs, hit our hypothetical head with an average of 243 peak Gs. The softest helmets, the Z1R ZRP-1s, bonked the noggin with an average of 176 peak Gs. This is a classic comparison of a stiff, fiberglass, Snell-rated helmet, the Arai, against a softer, polycarbonate-shell, DOT-only helmet, the Z1R. OK. So let's agree that we want to subject our heads to the minimum possible G force. Should we pick an impressive, expensive fiberglass/Kevlar/unobtanium-fiber helmet—or one of those less-expensive plastic-shelled helmets?

Conventional helmet-biz wisdom says fiberglass construction is somehow better at absorbing energy than plastic—something about the energy of the crash being used up in delaminating the shell. And that a stiffer shell lets a designer use softer foam inside—which might absorb energy better.

Our results showed the exact opposite—that plastic-shelled helmets actually performed better than fiberglass. In our big 3-meter hit—the high-energy kind of bash one might expect would show the supposed weaknesses of a plastic shell—the plastic helmets transferred an average of 20 fewer Gs compared with their fiberglass brothers, which were presumably designed by the same engineers to meet the same standards, and built in the same factories by the same people.

Why is this? We're guessing—but it's a really good guess: The EPS liner inside the shell is better at absorbing energy than the shell. The polycarbonate shells flex rather than crush and delaminate, and this flexing, far from being a problem, actually lets the EPS do more of its job of energy absorption while transferring less energy to the head.

Remember, these polycarbonate helmets from both Icon and Scorpion are also Snell M2000 rated. So they are tested to some very extreme energy levels. And Ed Becker, executive director of the Snell Foundation, is on record as saying that a low-priced—that is, plastic-shelled—Snell-certified helmet is just as good at protecting your head as a high-priced—that is, fiberglass—Snell-certified helmet. So at the high end of impact energy, we have the Snell Foundation vouching for their performance. And our testing, without the extreme two-hit hemi test, says they're actually superior

Doctors and head-injury researchers use a simplified rating of injuries, called the Abbreviated Injury Scale, or AIS, to describe how severely a patient is hurt when they come into a trauma facility. AIS 1 means you've been barely injured. AIS 6 means you're dead, or sure to be dead very soon. Here's the entire AIS scale:
AIS 1 = Minor
AIS 2 = Moderate
AIS 3 = Serious
AIS 4 = Severe
AIS 5 = Critical
AIS 6 = Unsurvivable

A patient's AIS score is determined separately for each different section of the body. So you could have an AIS 4 injury to your leg, an AIS 3 to your chest and an AIS 5 injury to your head. And you'd be one hurtin' puppy. Newman is quoted in the COST study on the impact levels likely to cause certain levels of injury. Back in the '80s he stated that, as a rough guideline, a peak linear impact—the kind we're measuring here—of 200 to 250 Gs generally corresponds to a head injury of AIS 4, or severe; that a 250 G to 300 G impact corresponds to AIS 5, or critical; and that anything over 300 Gs corresponds to AIS 6. That is, unsurvivable.

Newman isn't the only scientist who thinks getting hit with much more than 200 Gs is a bad idea. In fact, researchers have pretty much agreed on that for 50 years.
According to both these curves, exposing a human head to a force over 200 Gs for more than 2 milliseconds is what medical experts refer to as "bad." Heads are different, of course. Young, strong people can take more Gs than old, weak people. Some prizefighters can take huge hits again and again and not seem to suffer any ill effects other than a tendency to sell hamburger cookers on late-night TV. And the impacts a particular head has undergone in the past may make that head more susceptible to injury

The COST study was limited to people who had hit their helmets on the pavement in their accidents. Of these, 67 percent sustained some kind of head injury. Even more㭅 percent—sustained leg injuries, and 57 percent had thorax injuries. You can even calculate your odds using the Injury Severity Score, or ISS. Take the AIS scores for the worst three injuries you have. Square each of those scores—that is, multiply them by themselves. Add the three results and compare them with the ISS Scale of Doom below.

A score of 75 means you're dead. Sorry. Very few people with an ISS of 70 see tomorrow either.

If you're between 15 and 44 years old, an ISS score of 40 means you have a 50-50 chance of making it. If you're between 45 and 64 years old, ISS 29 is the 50-50 mark. And above 65 years old, the 50-50 level is an ISS of 20. For a 45- to 64-year old guy such as myself, an ISS over 29 means I'll probably die.

If I get two "serious," AIS 3 injuries—the aforementioned AIS 3 head hit and AIS 3 chest thump—and a "severe" AIS 4 leg injury, my ISS score is ... let's see, 3 times 3 is 9. Twice that is 18. 4 times 4 is 16. 18 and 16 is 34. Ooops. Gotta go.

Drop my AIS 3 head injury to an AIS 2 and my ISS score is 29. Now I've got a 50-50 shot.

[Moltenice]

AVERAGE Gs
Fewer Gs = Less chance of brain injury

DOT-only helmets:

Z1R ZRP-1 (P)
Average: 152 Gs
LF: 148 gs
RF: 176 gs
LR: 153 gs
RR: 130 gs

Fulmer AFD4 (P)
Average: 157 Gs
LF: 152 gs
RF: 173 gs
LR: 175 gs
RR: 130 gs

Pep Boys Raider (P)
Average: 174 Gs
LF: 163 gs
RF: 199 gs
LR: 185 gs
RR: 152 gs

BSI/DOT Helmets

AGV Ti-Tech (F)
Average: 169 Gs
LF: 156 gs
RF: 199 gs
LR: 195 gs
RR: 129 gs

Suomy Spec 1R (BSI) (F)
Average: 182 Gs
LF: 192 gs
RF: 215 gs
LR: 197 gs
RR: 126 gs

ECE 22-05/DOT Helmets

Schuberth S-1 (F)
Average: 161 Gs
LF: 151 gs
RF: 180 gs
LR: 176 gs
RR: 137 gs

Suomy Spec 1R (ECE) (F)
Average: 171 Gs
LF: 156 gs
RF: 200 gs
LR: 190 gs
RR: 140 gs

Shark RSX (F)
Average: 173 Gs
LF: 166 gs
RF: 187 gs
LR: 201 gs
RR: 141 gs

Vemar VSR
Average: 174 Gs
LF: 171 gs
RF: 198 gs
LR: 166 gs
RR: 162 gs

Snell 2000/DOT Helmets

Icon Mainframe (P)
Average: 181 Gs
LF: 168 gs
RF: 217 gs
LR: 189 gs
RR: 152 gs

Icon Alliance (F)
Average: 183 Gs
LF: 179 gs
RF: 200 gs
LR: 179 gs
RR: 175 gs

Scorpion EXO-400 (P)
Average: 187 Gs
LF: 185 gs
RF: 212 gs
LR: 193 gs
RR: 158 gs

AGV X-R2 (F)
Average: 188 Gs
LF: 192 gs
RF: 226 gs
LR: 166 gs
RR: 167 gs

Arai Tracker GT (F)
Average: 201 Gs
LF: 193 gs
RF: 243 gs
LR: 203 gs
RR: 166 gs

HJC AC-11 (F)
Average: 204 Gs
LF: 195 gs
RF: 230 gs
LR: 231 gs
RR: 163 gs

Scorpion EXO-700 (F)
Average: 211 Gs
LF: 207 gs
RF: 236 gs
LR: 226 gs
RR: 176 gs

Impact Key: LF: Left Front, 7-foot drop, Flat Pavement. RF: Right Front, 10-foot drop, Flat Pavement. LR: Left Rear, 7-foot drop, Flat Pavement. RR: Right Rear, 7-foot drop, Edge Anvil. Shell Key: (P): Polycarbonate (F): Fiberglass


Here is the article.. I read the whole thing twice.
http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/ge...helmet_review/


Hope this helps. I know it helped me to figure out what kind of protection I am looking for.

[BludLust]

I will only put an Arai on my pip!

Have done so since Noah rode off the ark on his Harley!

[Bender]

dang, I was gonna buy a Scorpion 700, and it's at the bottom of the list...!

[fretbuzz]

Price has nothing to do with protection -a DOT is a DOT and a Snell is a Snell. You usually pay more for style and comfort.

There are very affordable helmets out there that are comfortable and safe, though some people will never admit it. They have the "if you have a ten dollar head wear a ten dollar helmet" attitude -which makes no sense.

[molamann]

I have the same amount of trust for all full-faced helmets manufactured by the well known companies such as Shoei, Arai, and Scorpion to name a few. I got the Shoei RF-1000 because it fits my head perfectly and it's also the most glasses/sunglasses friendly helmet out of the helmets I've tried.

[BludLust]

Originally Posted by molamann

I have the same amount of trust for all full-faced helmets manufactured by the well known companies such as Shoei, Arai, and Scorpion to name a few. I got the Shoei RF-1000 because it fits my head perfectly and it's also the most glasses/sunglasses friendly helmet out of the helmets I've tried.

Yip... Shoei is another brand I would trust.

[fade94]

I was wearing an HJC when I was rearended. Brain damage on left temporal lobe (from hood) and frontal lobe (from bumper and asphalt) when I hit the ground.

[Slo'Poke]

I was one of those 'a helmet is a helmet' lads, and that is probably the case in terms of protection. COmfort factor is another matter. The Shoei RF-1000 comfort far exceeded that of the HJC I was wearing at the time, especially for the distance trips. Nowadays, I'll voice that when someone asks me which to get (assuming they like FF, that is).

[OKC_Kent]

Originally Posted by fade94

I was wearing an HJC when I was rearended. Brain damage on left temporal lobe (from hood) and frontal lobe (from bumper and asphalt) when I hit the ground.

Full face helmet? What model HJC?

[RichLockyer]

Originally Posted by fretbuzz

Price has nothing to do with protection -a DOT is a DOT and a Snell is a Snell. You usually pay more for style and comfort.

There are very affordable helmets out there that are comfortable and safe, though some people will never admit it. They have the "if you have a ten dollar head wear a ten dollar helmet" attitude -which makes no sense.

+10,000

I find it quite ironic that the original source of the $10 comment is now the primary manufacturer for $50 helmets sold at Wal Mart and Pep Boys.

Mike Bell.

It was a marketing slogan that's been repeated for 30 years and is now taken as "gospel", but the fact is it's BS.


Higher cost buys you a name, pretty graphics, and PERHAPS a more comfortable and more durable liner.

That said, each manufacturer's lid is slightly different... and even in the same maker, different MODELS have a different fit.

So ya, in some respects, a $600 Arai or Shoei might be "better" than a $100 HJC, but when it comes to protection, they are all quite comparable.

The difference between 150 and 200g? We aren't seeing a correlation in the article other than saying that 200+ is a level-4 "severe" injury.
The article also does not state the weight of the headform that was used, which would impact the resulting G readings.

150g is STILL a very significant impact. At that level, your 10-pound head weighs 1500 pounds. Trained fighter pilots black out at anything sustained over 10g even WITH a g-suit. "Normal" people will black out above 5g... a trained fighter pilot with no suit MIGHT be able to tolerate 7g for a very short period.

[gdhugh]

Originally Posted by RichLockyer

+10,000

So ya, in some respects, a $600 Arai or Shoei might be "better" than a $100 HJC, but when it comes to protection, they are all quite comparable.
And maybe better!

The difference between 150 and 200g? We aren't seeing a correlation in the article other than saying that 200+ is a level-4 "severe" injury.
The article also does not state the weight of the headform that was used, which would impact the resulting G readings.
No, but it does state how relative that weight is and how it's misused by SNELL. I won't quote the whole think but I think they hit on another important fact about the SNELL standard. It begins...
Snell and BSI dictate that every helmet be impact-tested with the same-weight headform inside, no matter the size of the helmet. That is, an XS helmet is required to withstand exactly the same total impact energy as an XXL.


150g is STILL a very significant impact. At that level, your 10-pound head weighs 1500 pounds. Trained fighter pilots black out at anything sustained over 10g even WITH a g-suit. "Normal" people will black out above 5g... a trained fighter pilot with no suit MIGHT be able to tolerate 7g for a very short period.

You also have to consider the differences from a pilot. The pilot in flight is subjected to a gradual increase in Gs to the point of passing out due to lack of blood and thus oxygen to the brain, while a motorcycle accident victim experiences a very brief, very high g force causing the deformation of the brain inthe brain cavity. I think the brevity of the event makes all the difference. The human brain can sustain high Gs (150-200) for very brief periods resulting in slight concussion (AIS-2 or AIS-3)

[Cranky CJ]

Originally Posted by Moltenice

Will it actually protect your brain in your next crash?

If you knew what your head was going to hit and how hard, you could choose the perfect helmet for that crash. But crashes are accidents. So you have to guess.

Helmets and oil. You can ask 25 different people and get 25 different answers on which are better.

You can only pick the one that is comfortable, affordable and give you the belief you are improving your chance of reducing a significant head injury. It is a guessing game. Some people come out of wicked crashes without a head injury. Some people drop it in a parking lot and bash their head. I went with the philosophy of 'I will pick one that I will wear' and not leave on the shelf because I don't like it for whatever reason, comfort, looks, etc...

[topolover]

When I got my F7D a couple weeks ago, I came here and checked out the discussion on helmets. You know, for something high speed, of course you want to get the best. Expensive, but worth it. I didn't have the money so I picked up a G-Max for $45. A day later it earned my respect. If I didn't have it on I would have ended up with a dozen stitches in my head.

It paid for itself right there.

[RichLockyer]

Awesome.

Now buy another one... that one is no longer adequate to protect you.

Any impact serious enough to "ring your bell" (mild concussion, ANY ear ringing or momentary thoughts of WTF?) renders the helmet trash.

[Saleenguy]

I suffered a bad crash, and my head bouncing several times off asphault at high speed.

Then skidded to a stop a long ways down the road with a fair bit of my Nolan scraped away on the 1 side and front.

I will only wear a Nolan since that day.
I am sure a crappy helmet regardless of price and I would have died.

Its not so much the price to me, its a real life lesson I had.

I replaced it with a new Nolan flip up, just like the one I crashed in.
And recently bought a new Nolan 102 with the blue tooth in it.
My Nolan 100 is still fine, I just want a new helmet is all.

[topolover]

Originally Posted by RichLockyer

Awesome.

Now buy another one... that one is no longer adequate to protect you.

Any impact serious enough to "ring your bell" (mild concussion, ANY ear ringing or momentary thoughts of WTF?) renders the helmet trash.

Got that right! $45 is nothing compared to the $1,200 the hospital would have charged me.

[KZBob]

I still say there's so much BS in that article it isnt even funny.

[topolover]

Can you explain that some for those of us that can't see it?

[RichLockyer]

For one thing, there's no cross-reference relating number of G's with a typical AIS level... only the comment that "over 200g is "bad" "

Is "bad" a level 3 or a level 5? Makes a big difference.
Will 150g (the best lids) result in only level 1, or may they also result in level 3 or higher?


Even accepting the article as 100% fact, there is still missing information that one needs to form an informed opinion.