It's way past time for me to replace my motorcycle helmet, and while I've been keeping an eye out, I haven't found anything that works for me. Shoei no longer makes the model I have, and their replacement models don't even come close to fitting me as well as my current one.
While looking for a replacement, I've been doing some research on helmet standards as well. Apparently there's a big controversy over what constitutes a "good" helmet. This article at Motorcyclist Online covers the issue fairly well, and offers an independent analysis of the situation. My take-away message from it is that you should avoid Snell certified helmets if possible because it doesn't provide enough cushioning. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a problem because most helmet makers view Snell certification as a nice marketing check point, and there are fewer and fewer new helmets that are not both DOT and Snell certified.
Another interesting thing I've learned is that helmet makers pretty much certify their helmets themselves. The NHTSA only does spot checks to make sure that their certification claims are true. And the scary bit? There are quite a few that don't pass these checks. Results for these checks can be found here. I was surprised to find that they found an Arai that failed in 2006.
So what's a guy looking to buy a new helmet to do?
No comments:
Post a Comment