Helmets: Current trends?

The visor should just pop off in a crash. This may piss you off when you drop the helmet.

The points on the back are for fashion, not aerodynamics. The rounder helmets are safer. Big problem is manufacturers don’t make a lot of helmets without back points but with a lot of ventilation–the round urban motorcycle-style helmets look like they’d be hotter than hell in a DC summer. The solid ones are also safer in terms of small object impact (as long as you don’t die of heatstroke before the crash.) The reality is that the manufacturers need to differentiate their product lines so they can get big profits when possible. None of those helmets has more then a few bucks worth of foam in it, so they add some tail fins and position it for racers and they can charge an extra $150 for it. The flip side is that they can’t market a flat-back, high vent, $50 helmet because racers might start wondering why they’re paying so much. From bell’s line you can look at something like the piston or the muni (one of my helmets is an older model similar to that one), so it is possible to get a helmet without tailfins and with some ventilation. In addition to bigger holes, you should also find a reduction in weight as you spend more money.

Edit to add a couple of other thoughts: the high end road helmets tend to not have a visor because they keep you from seeing in front when your head is down. (Not relevant if you ride in a more upright position.) The round helmets also have more room for graphics, which I think is a big factor in the urban setting. It’s also worth noting that helmets have (slowly) been improving–even the low-end is mostly molded-in with better adjustment mechanisms than even a few years ago.

Surprisingly, Consumer Reports gave the Bern helmets (your classic bowling ball style with very few vents) very bad grades recently (I haven’t read their report, only read some references to it in another article); I wish I knew why.

Yeah, the fins are there strictly for aesthetic purposes. I greatly suspect that most of the folks riding around with the skateboard style are doing so mostly for style purposes. I like how they look versus traditional roadie helmets but am not willing to fry my brain for it; it is way too hot around here. I’m a head sweater with frizzy hair issues so I ponied up ungodly $$ for a Specialized Prevail. Extremely light with probably the best ventilation of any helmet on the market but I strongly suspect that it will not protect my head all that well since there is so little plastic/foam, esp on the sides. When it gets cold, I switch to my heavier helmets (one that looks very much like the Slant and a Bern with winter liner).

As far as a visor goes, my Prevail does not have a visor whereas the others do. To be perfectly honest, I never notice that the prevail does not have a visor but then again I always wear sunglasses that change from light to dark depending on the lighting conditions. I never wear a hat under my helmet.

Only buy a white or similarly light colored helmet. Last thing you want on your head is black during a DC summer.

The low end Bells are really crappy and a waste of money, though the midrange ones are decent. If you wear sunglasses (which you should be wearing eye protection on every ride) you really don’t need a visor (they fall off within a week). The “cute” helmets are usually a lot of form over function and a bad waste of money. My wife was pretty excited when she found a deal on Nutcases (buy one get one free) but after wearing them once we both put them in storage. Even in October they were way too hot and ridiculous heavy. Sure, they looked nice but they were a waste of money.

The higher end racing helmets are pretty ridiculous looking but they fit extremely well and are really well ventilated. On the flip side, they don’t call them “Swiss cheese” helmets for nothing.

@vvill 57098 wrote:

I’m curious about the new MIPS push that’s coming through:
http://mipshelmet.com/home
It was mentioned in a Bicycling magazine article recently.

They have the POCS in REI. I asked the sales guy about them to see what he would say. He said it is a bigger helmet that offers less ventilation. He said the advantage is that it can offers more protection and can sustain more accidents. Not sure if that’s true….. but picking up on what Dickie said…. in this summer heat, I want a well ventilated vented helmet. A hot helmet is a helmet clipped to my handlebar, not on my head (and yes I did pick white because I think white reflects heat while black absorbs it). Dickie is right – for a helmet to protect your coconut, it has to be on your coconut. It has to be comfortable. And uncomfortable helmet is one that you will not wear.

And yes, I bought a helmet without fins. The advantage of the POCS MIPS is that it absorbs rotational impact. Well those damn fins on your helmet are going to add to rotational impact if that is where your head hits. You should have not thing sticking out of your helmet – it is a point of force. WABA’s Bike Safety Institute has helmet guides. It says “Pick one that is round and smooth on the outside without snag points.”

Oh and the Bike Helmet Safety Institute took issues with the BICYCLING senseless article

Nowhere does the article mention the key flaw in the MIPS argument: in the real world, bicycle helmets are so loosely coupled with the head that a slip-plane inside the helmet structure does not add significant sideways movement in an impact. The helmet moves anyway, unless it is constrained in a lab test. We told the author that, and pointed to it on our Web page, but he chose to ingnore it and quote us and others on less basic points about MIPS as if we thought those minor points were the important ones. That is highly misleading to the reader.

@mstone 57129 wrote:

I’ll disagree on that one–sunglasses aren’t for staring directly into the sun, and I ride into the sunrise & sunset enough that the visor is very useful for keeping the sun out of my eyes, even with sunglasses. (On the commuter bike; as I alluded to earlier, in a lower position a visor makes me tilt my head up too much.) It’s also a handy place to attach my mirror.

Perhaps I should have said glasses instead of sunglasses. Getting hit in the eye by a bug at 20mph is going to hurt like hell without them.

@rcannon100 57132 wrote:

And yes, I bought a helmet without fins. The advantage of the POCS MIPS is that it absorbs rotational impact. Well those damn fins on your helmet are going to add to rotational impact if that is where your head hits. You should have not thing sticking out of your helmet – it is a point of force. WABA’s Bike Safety Institute has helmet guides. It says “Pick one that is round and smooth on the outside without snag points.”

Oh and the Bike Helmet Safety Institute took issues with the BICYCLING senseless article

Thanks for that – interesting read.

@NicDiesel 57150 wrote:

Perhaps I should have said glasses instead of sunglasses. Getting hit in the eye by a bug at 20mph is going to hurt like hell without them.

Dude. I got shot in the chest at 20 mph with a cicada on Friday, and then it wanted to hitch a ride! I was very glad it didn’t hit me in the face.

I’ve posted about this before, but I really like my Lazer CityZen, which has an integrated visor (which I really, really love). I wear glasses, and my eyes are sensitive in a way that I hate wearing sunglasses (it takes me too long to adjust from shade to full light if I’m wearing sunglasses — definitely not good for cycling), so I just wear my normal glasses, and rely on the helmet’s visor for shade, as well as protection from rain (great for keeping rain off the glasses).

It’s ventilated, but not enough for DC summers. I need to get another, but I haven’t found one with the same kind of vizor (v. the cheap snap off ones).

I get comments almost every day on my helmet. People literally stop their cars, roll down their windows, and say nice helmet. I think it’s awesome too, but because of the practicality of the visor and the general fit. I think car-people like the look.