Open face helmets

[tommymck]

I have resisted these for my entire riding career. Picked this up locally on sale and I have to admit that summer riding with this is really nice. I doubt I'll be thinking about that if I face plant sometime, but in 90 degree plus weather it's an advantage...

 

[Gone in 60]

With a few well placed white pinstripes, it would match the bike nicely!

 

[KiowaEagle_imp]

Back in May I was riding with a group and witnessed a Harley rider wearing a 3/4 helmet who was not with us go into a downhill turn too hot and he tried to ride it through. The bike high sided and he hung on. Both he and the bike were flipping through the air. He ended up face down in the road with a stream of blood running down the hill. I thought he was dead. We all pulled over to try to assist and stop traffic while we waited for the ambulance. Just before it came he regained consciousness and was trying to get up. I was about 40 yards from him but he was making some haunting guttural noises and I could see his face was a bloody pulp. I don't know what ever happened to that gentleman but it certainly did reinforce my steadfast belief in full face helmets. All in our group were riding ATGATT and all agreed if it had happened to one of us we likely would have been able to walk or at least hobble away.

I'm not saying anyone shouldn't use a 3/4 helmet as opposed to full face. Any protection is better than none. Here in Pennsylvania I usually see more riders without helmets than with. I just know that I wouldn't before that incident and I certainly won't going forward.

 

[Tev62]

Yes, those helmets not for me either, too much of a compromise to my mind. You could say the same about actually riding a motorcycle in the first place so each to their own.

 

[PowerDubs_imp]

Not a chance I would ride without a full helmet and full gear.

I see people all the times on bikes- a jacket, jeans- but no gloves, sneakers, 1/2 bucket cap excuse for a helmet... dummies.

My father in law rides in t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. Always says- If I crash I just want to die.

I respond- but what if you don't?

 

[Nachodaddy]

Not a chance I would ride without a full helmet and full gear.

I see people all the times on bikes- a jacket, jeans- but no gloves, sneakers, 1/2 bucket cap excuse for a helmet... dummies.

My father in law rides in t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. Always says- If I crash I just want to die.

I respond- but what if you don't?

Dubs, you are absolutely right, and that is the point of the helmet laws. When the helmet laws were made, enough bare-headed riders were ending up in the ICU running up massive hospital bills which the taxpayers ended up paying, that the states decided to try to limit that cost by requiring helmets. It wasn't concern for the rider or his/her passenger, it was primarily financial.
And then there's the dark joke that the helmet helps identify the body.

 

[Gone in 60]

Speaking of helmets that match the bike, I've been resisting one of these: https://www.motorcyclegear.com/stre...face/biltwell/gringo_s_ece_orange_helmet.html

It would be a nice compliment to the red CB1100, price is good, but I recently got a lime-gold colored one, and with the face shield down and no vents, I'm thinking it would get a might hot in there.

 

[Nachodaddy]

Speaking of helmets that match the bike, I've been resisting one of these: https://www.motorcyclegear.com/stre...face/biltwell/gringo_s_ece_orange_helmet.html

It would be a nice compliment to the red CB1100, price is good, but I recently got a lime-gold colored one, and with the face shield down and no vents, I'm thinking it would get a might hot in there.

You NEED this helmet. It never gets hot on So Cal, who you kidding? It is for those rides to Solvang or Cold Spring Tavern. You only live once and the PRICE IS RIGHT!

 

[clearviewx]

That's why we live in the United States where we have choices.

 

[misterprofessionality]

I'm a huge proponent of full face all the time, summer, winter, whatever, but at the same time i DO have a 3/4 visor helmet like the one in Tommy's pic. I use it on my little mini bike in the summer heat, especially when i'm at a festival environment and there's a lot of slow speed toodling around. whenever the potential speed of an accident exceeds a certain limit though...yea. back to my Shoei.

The bike in the pic is a R18. i've ridden one. i'm confident TommyMCK isn't going to be trying to set lap times on that thing.

Not a chance I would ride without a full helmet and full gear.

I see people all the times on bikes- a jacket, jeans- but no gloves, sneakers, 1/2 bucket cap excuse for a helmet... dummies.

My father in law rides in t-shirt, shorts and flip flops. Always says- If I crash I just want to die.

I respond- but what if you don't?

I always find this attitude interesting because it highlights how motorcycle crashes are simoultaneously massively OVERestimated and massively UNDERestimated. Some people go through life thinking they're invincible and some people go through life thinking any kind of motorcycle accident is the END OF YOUR LIFE. It's not. theyr'e survivable. a lot of people just kind of brush off and are superficially injured. at the same time, if you take NO steps to mitigate the inevitable crash, you'll turn out much worse. in all cases, survival is actually much more frequent than you'd think. statistics show that even people who go down without a helmet survive way more often than you'd think...just with far more severe and longlasting injury. thinking you'll just perish nice and easy if you crash your motorcycle is a worse kind of hubris than thinking you'll never crash at all.

 

[PowerDubs_imp]

I still have the helmet from may accident in 2018 in my garage to remind me- from a backroad at maybe 40-45 and put me in a trauma center- and it has a lot of scrapes across the chin bar / face area that would have been nasty without it. Even with it- I broke off one of my front teeth.

Don't fool yourself with 'festival low speed'. Still need convincing? I'd bet the force of my punching you in the face would be less than your face hitting the ground on a mini bike- but you probably wouldn't let me do it.

 

[GoldOxide_imp]

I have resisted these for my entire riding career. Picked this up locally on sale and I have to admit that summer riding with this is really nice. I doubt I'll be thinking about that if I face plant sometime, but in 90 degree plus weather it's an advantage...

Great snaps Tommy of the Beamer. Looks majestic.

I have the same helmet. Love it for hot weather riding and have been using it for many years. It is surprisingly quiet on the freeway given that it is 3/4. Lately it has been relegated to urban running around. It is well-suited for that job.

 

[tommymck]

I definitely didn't mean to promote less than a full face helmet. Jimmy Carter was president the last time that I rode in an open face.... Safety on motorcycles is an interesting topic and we all make decisions based sometimes on good data, sometimes bad data, and sometimes what seems like common sense, but who knows?

For example, regarding gloves and boots. I'd feel naked without either. How much protection am I really getting with leather gloves? Seems like abrasion protection, but I don't know of any source of data that compares outcomes with and without gloves, much less what type of gloves / glove armor is best. I always ride in motorcycle specific boots with protection in presumably the right places, but I have no idea if they are any better than a hightop athletic shoe for example. Seems like they should be, but I don't know. Regardless, I'm used to those items, and would actually be less comfortable in anything else, regardless of safety.

I have to admit that I don't have the same attitude towards riding pants. In winter, over pants with armor or riding pants with armor are typical for me, but in the summer I'll ride with jeans. I know that there are abrasion standards for motorcycle clothing, but I'm not aware of any definitive data looking at outcomes in the real world, both relative to abrasion and armor.

Helmet standards are in a bit of a mess at the moment with regards to how SNEL is written. With regards to safety data comparing helmets like the one that I showed in the picture relative to a full face helmet, I actually looked when I purchased the helmet. The data is actually inconclusive, which I found surprising. Common sense would dictate that a full face helmet is better, but in what percentage of real-world accidents?

Like Mr. P., I have circumstances where I'll wear the helmet, and commuting at high speeds isn't one of them. How much does that matter? I don't know.

And I definitely agree with you GO. That helmet is unbelievably quiet. More so than my full faces. I don't know why, but it is.

At the end of the day, the one thing that we can all probably agree on is that we don't want to get punched in the face by PowerDubs!!

 

[noroomtomove]

Tommy, that is a nice looking bike.
Regards NRTM

 

[Cormanus]

Tommy, there’s some stuff on the MotoCAP site rating various items of riding kit, including helmets. The methodology is described.

For helmets, there’s also the UK [url=https://sharp.dft.gov.uk]Sharp site.

 

[Aussieflyer]

Buy and use the helmet that YOU want, I'll never push my views but will share my experience ...

I had a mishap in February 2021 which is relevant to the discussion going on here. Here's a picture of what was my favorite helmet after the crash. My injuries were bad enough and only god knows where I'd be if not for the the full face helmet.

 

[Wagonpeddler_imp]

Interesting topic. When I first started riding here in PA, there were no helmet law requirements. Used to ride the bike to dry my (rather long) hair. How my outlook has changed some 55 years later. PA did pass a helmet law early 70's, but repealed it a few years ago. Took a spill on a bicycle (with helmet) going less than 5 mph....got a bruised rib and several bloody scrapes. Always cringe when I see someone riding without a helmet.

 

[tommymck]

Tommy, there’s some stuff on the MotoCAP site rating various items of riding kit, including helmets. The methodology is described.

For helmets, there’s also the UK [url=https://sharp.dft.gov.uk]Sharp site.

I had seen the sharp site, but not motocap. As you say, the methodology is described, but has to do with impact and abrasion tests rather than actual study of outcomes. The Sharp methodology does at least correlate accident data with the likelihood of certain kinds of impacts, and then rates helmets based on their ability to protect those types of impacts in lab tests. The site doesn't have open face helmets rated at all though. In any case, the methodology is different than doing a large study where you correlate real world injuries with the type of helmet actually used.

The US NIH did such a study that showed that 3/4 and full-face helmets were better than "half-helmets", but that there wasn't a statistically significant difference between full and 3/4 face in terms of "lasting or significant" head injury, though they were quick to point out that more data was needed.

The motocap site does rate open face. A similar Arai open face to the one I showed scores 3 stars out of 5, where high-end Arai racing helmets score 4 out of 5. I guess that's "one better", sort of like a Marshall amp, but it's not clear what to do with that.

Anecdotally and common sense wise full face has to help in an accident (just look at Aussieflyer's photo!). But anecdotal and common sense doesn't always take into account other factors. If, for example, the added visibility in a 3/4 helmet makes it less likely to get into an accident in the first place (not saying that it does...but it could) or if for whatever reason people instinctively change the way that their head and body react in an accident while wearing such a helmet (not saying that they do). that isn't captured in test data from sites like this, even assuming that the methodologies are valid (which is sketchy in some details).

I'm a pilot and happen to fly a Cirrus. These planes are popular for their efficient composite designs but they also contain a full airframe parachute to be used in the event of catastrophic failure. Counterintuitively, the planes had a worse safety record than similar planes without the parachute for over a decade. It turns out that the parachutes influenced pilot behavior. It took a concerted training effort with owners of the entire fleet for the next decade to bring the safety record back in line.

Anyway, none of this is to say that full face helmets aren't the best. I find topics like this interesting to explore though.

 

[Cormanus]

Agreed. Analysis of the value of the methodology used by Sharp and motocap is above my pay grade, but I guess anything to do with motorcycles that fails to account for data from real accidents will not be 100% reliable.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to wear a full-face helmet.

 

[GoldOxide_imp]

Many riders die because their spindly neck gets into the action.

At least wearing a helmet keeps the pumpkin seeds together.