New BIKE!!!

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

believe what you want. basing your entire belief on a motorcycle magazine is kind of ehh. we all know how accurate a bunch of journalists are, especially in magazines where advertisments are the direct cause of their bias. i highly doubt that the multi million dollar racing teams and leagues base their helmet choice/standards on a rating that is just a selling gimmick and according to you has no real world basis.

You're not listening to me...

For a MOTORCYCLE ridden on the STREET, a Snell rated helmet is not the best idea. For AUTO RACING it makes perfect sense. There is a HUGE difference between the two in case you didn't know. If you would actually look at the data from the Hurt report and maybe even read the article I mentioned rather that just saying blindly that "these guys use Snell helmets so they must be the best" you just might understand.

Like I said, Motorcyclist pissed a lot of companies off and lost advertising solely because of this article. Sounds like they're sellouts to the advertisers to me. A Snell rating looks superior on paper and typically gets the reaction that you are giving. That the Snell standard is not based on actual injury thresholds is lost on most people. That the criteria for testing for certification is not based on any accident data and totally inconsistent with actual accident data doesn't matter. People simply see further "rating" beyond DOT and instantly think that it must be better for them. THAT is selling out to advertising. Ignoring facts based solely on a "rating."

 

[bri487 5,000+ posts]

You're not listening to me...
For a MOTORCYCLE ridden on the STREET, a Snell rated helmet is not the best idea. For AUTO RACING it makes perfect sense. There is a HUGE difference between the two in case you didn't know. If you would actually look at the data from the Hurt report and maybe even read the article I mentioned rather that just saying blindly that "these guys use Snell helmets so they must be the best" you just might understand.

Like I said, Motorcyclist pissed a lot of companies off and lost advertising solely because of this article. Sounds like they're sellouts to the advertisers to me. A Snell rating looks superior on paper and typically gets the reaction that you are giving. That the Snell standard is not based on actual injury thresholds is lost on most people. That the criteria for testing for certification is not based on any accident data and totally inconsistent with actual accident data doesn't matter. People simply see further "rating" beyond DOT and instantly think that it must be better for them. THAT is selling out to advertising. Ignoring facts based solely on a "rating."

you are pretty repetitive. impact is impact no matter what you are driving/riding. force put forth on ones head is measured the same no matter if you fall off of a motorcycle at 40 mph or hit a wall at 180 mph in a car. the helmet soley protects an individuals head from impact. you said it yourself, the magazine companies are pissing people off and losing them as advertisings, so naturally they are going to be baised towards those that continue to support them.

 

[bri487 5,000+ posts]

oh, and check this out. click on testing. http://www.smf.org/

 

[mannyb18b]

and also, I dont even really look at all the ratings when I purchase a helmet. I inspect the **** out of it..and solely on looks and feel, I found the lids me and Bri are talking about to be far superior.

Even in just weight alone, HJC's are f'n heavy. screw that.

 

[bri487 5,000+ posts]

and also, I dont even really look at all the ratings when I purchase a helmet. I inspect the **** out of it..and solely on looks and feel, I found the lids me and Bri are talking about to be far superior.
Even in just weight alone, HJC's are f'n heavy. screw that.

and a quality helmet is pretty stable on your head, it doesnt wobble at higher speeds. and if your helmet doesnt have the R&D put into it, they have the tendency to lift as well at higher speeds.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

you are pretty repetitive. impact is impact no matter what you are driving/riding. force put forth on ones head is measured the same no matter if you fall off of a motorcycle at 40 mph or hit a wall at 180 mph in a car. the helmet soley protects an individuals head from impact. you said it yourself, the magazine companies are pissing people off and losing them as advertisings, so naturally they are going to be baised towards those that continue to support them.

It is apparent from your post that you do not understand elastic collisions. Impact is not impact. If the impact is not severe enough for the "padding" in the helmet to give and absorb the impact then all the energy is transferred to your head. If the padding is softer, it absorbs lesser impacts better. Actual studies of street motorcycle accidents have shown that all but a statistically insignificant number of street motorcycle accidents fall into the "minor head impact" category. Snell helmets are designed to "protect" against severe head impacts. Since helmets are designed specifically with passing Snell in mind because of the perception, such as the one that you seem to stick so blindly to, that if it isn't Snell rated it isn't any good, the helmet liner is built specifically to pass the Snell rating test, not to protect your head. The impacts to the helmet in the Snell test are way beyond what is encountered in a street accident and consist ot two severe impacts when only one is ever really encountered. As such the liner is made way too dense in order to survive the second hit. The allowable transferred G's are also way beyond the threshold of serious debilitating injury. Basically the rating has no merit. Not only is the impact to strong, but the energy transferred to your head is still enough to really mess you up.

Now apply a more realistic test such as the COST 327 (soon to be the new European standard) and the Snell helmet fails miserably. Why? Because the ECE standard places its priority on delivering less energy to the head rather than increasing the strength of the blow that can be resisted while still allowing serious injury. Manufaturers that make Snell rated helmets don't sell the same models overseas because they would not be legal helmets. They are too hard.

Believe what you want. But if you did some research you would find some serious flaws in the Snell rating.

 

[bri487 5,000+ posts]

It is apparent from your post that you do not understand elastic collisions. Impact is not impact. If the impact is not severe enough for the "padding" in the helmet to give and absorb the impact then all the energy is transferred to your head. If the padding is softer, it absorbs lesser impacts better. Actual studies of street motorcycle accidents have shown that all but a statistically insignificant number of street motorcycle accidents fall into the "minor head impact" category. Snell helmets are designed to "protect" against severe head impacts. Since helmets are designed specifically with passing Snell in mind because of the perception, such as the one that you seem to stick so blindly to, that if it isn't Snell rated it isn't any good, the helmet liner is built specifically to pass the Snell rating test, not to protect your head. The impacts to the helmet in the Snell test are way beyond what is encountered in a street accident and consist ot two severe impacts when only one is ever really encountered. As such the liner is made way too dense in order to survive the second hit. The allowable transferred G's are also way beyond the threshold of serious debilitating injury. Basically the rating has no merit. Not only is the impact to strong, but the energy transferred to your head is still enough to really mess you up.
Now apply a more realistic test such as the COST 327 (soon to be the new European standard) and the Snell helmet fails miserably. Why? Because the ECE standard places its priority on delivering less energy to the head rather than increasing the strength of the blow that can be resisted while still allowing serious injury. Manufaturers that make Snell rated helmets don't sell the same models overseas because they would not be legal helmets. They are too hard.

Believe what you want. But if you did some research you would find some serious flaws in the Snell rating.

believe me, before you jump on a shifter kart that is capabale of 135 mph and race it wheel to wheel with 20 other guys, you do some research on your safety gear. the governing association makes our standards for our safety equipment yearly, and even go as far as checking it ever single race during the techinical safety inspection of your kart.

if snell rated helmets, in which they have a motorcycle rating for guess what, motorcycle helmets, is too hard, then explain to me that if you drop it, why does the inner liner get damaged? and for motorsports, take nascar for example(or a fully enclosed car), the impact for which helmet is rated (motorsports) would not be as severe (generally speaking) as coming off of a motorcycle at 150mph and letting your head break your fall.

 

[flamed_subage 10+ year member]

RicEr BikEs aRe Like RicErs CarS..

JuNk..Get A Real BiKe, No, NoT a HardlY DavIdSOn, TrIumPH FTW. aND tHEn bE a ReAL mAn.

RoCkeT III OwNs All YoUr PuNk ASSes

 

[CBRworm 10+ year member]

Congrats on the bike. I had a red/black one. Great bike.

whoever has the Cart, I had a tony cart a while ago - lots of fun. Had to go to miami or jacksonville to ride it though, ended up selling it to buy another bike.

As far as the helmets go, I roadraced for about 8 years and broke a few helmets. I never hurt my head - the helmets did their job. I personally like Shoei and Arai. The important thing is that you wear a real helmet, not a brain bucket.

Down here in FL there is no helmet law. Many people die from very minor crashes that they would have otherwise walked away.

I hit the ground one time on the street at about 17 mph. Someone pulled out in front of me, I slowed down as much as I could before impact. I jumped off the bike right before it hit the car, literaly 15-17 mph. My shoei X-SP helmet looked like an easter egg. Totally collapsed the area over my right eye and scraped up the face sheild. Other than some roadrash on my arm and the palms of my hands - no injury. Had I not been wearing the helmet, my head would have looked like a crushed easter egg.

More than once on the track I have smacked the back of my helmet on the track. Each time the helmet sacrificed itself and saved my head. Luckily I never got run over.

 

[bri487 5,000+ posts]

Congrats on the bike. I had a red/black one. Great bike.
whoever has the Cart, I had a tony cart a while ago - lots of fun. Had to go to miami or jacksonville to ride it though, ended up selling it to buy another bike.

As far as the helmets go, I roadraced for about 8 years and broke a few helmets. I never hurt my head - the helmets did their job. I personally like Shoei and Arai. The important thing is that you wear a real helmet, not a brain bucket.

Down here in FL there is no helmet law. Many people die from very minor crashes that they would have otherwise walked away.

I hit the ground one time on the street at about 17 mph. Someone pulled out in front of me, I slowed down as much as I could before impact. I jumped off the bike right before it hit the car, literaly 15-17 mph. My shoei X-SP helmet looked like an easter egg. Totally collapsed the area over my right eye and scraped up the face sheild. Other than some roadrash on my arm and the palms of my hands - no injury. Had I not been wearing the helmet, my head would have looked like a crushed easter egg.

More than once on the track I have smacked the back of my helmet on the track. Each time the helmet sacrificed itself and saved my head. Luckily I never got run over.

i drove a brand new tony 125 shifter about two months ago, cant say that i liked it. not for my style of driving. i am on a cts now, not many people know of them because they arent mass produced but hey are definitly the best thing i have ever driven, and definitly the best quality craftsmanship i have ever seen. i have been owned 1 invader, 4 emmicks, 4 trackmagics, and now this cts, but i have just about driven them all.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

believe me, before you jump on a shifter kart that is capabale of 135 mph and race it wheel to wheel with 20 other guys, you do some research on your safety gear. the governing association makes our standards for our safety equipment yearly, and even go as far as checking it ever single race during the techinical safety inspection of your kart.

How did you go about doing your research? Did you just accept that good enough for Snell=good enough for you or did you actually go to the trouble and expense of destroying a bunch of different helmets under circumstances simulating actual crashes in seeing which ones delivered the least amount of energy to the head? I'm not saying that Snell rated helmets aren't good helmets in lots of ways. The top of the line helmets sold in the US are all Snell rated and that is exactly because of people thinking along the same lines as you. The makers know that becuase of the aura surrounding the Snell rating in the US consumers won't buy their helmets at a premium price unless the little sticker was there.

if snell rated helmets, in which they have a motorcycle rating for guess what, motorcycle helmets, is too hard, then explain to me that if you drop it, why does the inner liner get damaged?

One has nothing to do with the other.

and for motorsports, take nascar for example(or a fully enclosed car), the impact for which helmet is rated (motorsports) would not be as severe (generally speaking) as coming off of a motorcycle at 150mph and letting your head break your fall.

According to all the studies done on motorcycle accidents, the severity of the impact actually has almost nothing to do with the speed the bike is traveling at the time of the accident. There are two component vectors invloved and the pavement that your head hits the vast majority of the time is only countering one of those vectors: the gravity vector. The impact only has to do with how much of your velocity is headed straight down. That is dictated by how high you were when you started to fall, not how fast you were traveling horizontally. Most any helmet will do a great job of protecting your cranium from road rash since that is a purely abrasive type injury. Combine that with the fact that in the 3 major scientific studies conducted world-wide the average accident speed was on the order of 25 MPH. If you hit a solid object head on at much of any speed, no helmet in the world is going to save you because you will still die from severe injury to the rest of your body, so why test a motorcycle helmet using an impact of that severity? That is what the Snell standard does. Not only that, the allowable force transmitted to the head is an arbitrary figure that is WAY beyond the threshold of injury.
http://www.helmets.org/whatneed.htm

That is a much more informative read than the SMF website.

"There is a second thread in the seemingly endless discussion of g thresholds: concussion. The vast majority of consumers assume that a helmet should prevent concussion in even the heaviest hits, and that if the helmet protects against severe blows it must surely be easily protective in lesser ones. But in fact the helmets built to our standards are in many cases too hard to protect against a mild concussion in either a low speed hit where foam fails to crush or a much harder hit where clinically evident permanent injury is avoided, but a lesser concussion still results even though the helmet has not crushed completely and bottomed out."

That's an excert from that site that states exactly what I've been saying and you've been arguing against. Several studies have defined the vastly ovewhelming majority of motorcycle crashes as a low speed impacts putting the above into context. If you are going to wear protective gear to mitigate inury in the event of a mishap, why focus your protection around a type accident that is a statistical anomoly at the expense of a the type most likely to occur? The Snell standard only considers the anomoly.

I'm not talking about your race gear. And one type helmet does not fit all applications.

BTW, I found a link to the article I mentioned earlier.

http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/gearbox/motorcycle_helmet_review/

Looks like advertised fueled propaganda to me //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/rolleyes.gif.c1fef805e9d1464d377451cd5bc18bfb.gif

 

[bri487 5,000+ posts]

you really need to stop listening to biased opinions and accpet the fact that snell is the most respected rating, and that is for a reason.

 

[helotaxi 5,000+ posts]

you really need to stop listening to biased opinions and accpet the fact that snell is the most respected rating, and that is for a reason.

It's the most respected rating simply because for a long time it was the only one and as such became known. They spent a lot of money to establish their name and charge companies per helmet made to certify them. Non-profit or not, Snell is a business.

Being well known and even respected doesn't put one above scrutiny. Snell has not done anything appreciable with their standard since '85. Technology is out there to make a much safer helmet but until ratings actually require progress, there is no incentive for companies to improve their designs. Snell is in the position because of their name and reputation to actually get companies to make better helmets that make use of the newer technologies, but they haven't. If they were truly interested in bringing the safest helmets to market as the claim every other sentence on their website and in all their literature, why haven't they made their standard more stringent in regards to allowable energy transfered to the head? Why? Because they have most of the masses, such as yourself, convinced that they are the end all be all of safety certifications and that they really are doing something productive. 20 years ago they were doing good. That they haven't made the requirements for certification more stringent in over 20yrs is while continuing to toot their own horn on the good they are doing is irresponsible at best.

I've done research. Every source I've found has said one of two things: they've either quoted Snell lit. verbatim (basically, "we're the best because we say so") or they've actually explained why, using real data, the Snell rating is insufficient and outdated. The former are usually helmet companies that sell Snell certified helmets, the latter are usually safety organiztions and/or independant research labs that aren't trying to sell anything but actually educate people. I wonder who's giving the biased opinion?

 

[bri487 5,000+ posts]

It's the most respected rating simply because for a long time it was the only one and as such became known. They spent a lot of money to establish their name and charge companies per helmet made to certify them. Non-profit or not, Snell is a business.
Being well known and even respected doesn't put one above scrutiny. Snell has not done anything appreciable with their standard since '85. Technology is out there to make a much safer helmet but until ratings actually require progress, there is no incentive for companies to improve their designs. Snell is in the position because of their name and reputation to actually get companies to make better helmets that make use of the newer technologies, but they haven't. If they were truly interested in bringing the safest helmets to market as the claim every other sentence on their website and in all their literature, why haven't they made their standard more stringent in regards to allowable energy transfered to the head? Why? Because they have most of the masses, such as yourself, convinced that they are the end all be all of safety certifications and that they really are doing something productive. 20 years ago they were doing good. That they haven't made the requirements for certification more stringent in over 20yrs is while continuing to toot their own horn on the good they are doing is irresponsible at best.

I've done research. Every source I've found has said one of two things: they've either quoted Snell lit. verbatim (basically, "we're the best because we say so") or they've actually explained why, using real data, the Snell rating is insufficient and outdated. The former are usually helmet companies that sell Snell certified helmets, the latter are usually safety organiztions and/or independant research labs that aren't trying to sell anything but actually educate people. I wonder who's giving the biased opinion?

so if they are outdated and dont update their requirements, why do major racing organizations still go by their ratings for their standards? also, why wouldnt a snell SA90 or a SA95 helmet be accepted today by those organizations if they are the same as a SA2000 which is still accepted or a SA2005 which is the most current?

 

[Beat_Dominator 5,000+ posts]

Helotaxi is right. That article was awesome.