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Choosing the right Motorcycle helmet can make a difference….
….literally between life and death. But how does an ordinary guy in the street make an informed decision about what kind of helmets give the best protection? There are so many makes, models and styles. Not to mention DOT approved, Snell approved, ECE approved! It is enough to make you go goggle-eyed when confronted with so much information.
Tests have shown that it is perfectly possible to suffer a fatal injury falling off a stationary bike if you hit your unprotected head on the kerb, so clearly choosing the right helmet is important.
But which one?
Wouldn’t it be easier if someone just said, “Look, when you are in a crash, you need to protect this part of you head, because this is the part that is most likely to get hurt”…
Well, that’s what I thought. But it wasn’t that easy. The kind of information you need to make that kind of call requires someone, somewhere to look at a whole bunch of motorcycle crashes, look at the motorcycle helmet damage, assess where point of impact occurred and put the information into a form that allows ordinary motorcyclists (like you and me) to make a decision for themselves.
However, the good news is that if you look hard enough, the information is available. A study was carried out a few years ago by Deitmar Otte, at the Medizinsche Hochschule in Hanover, Germany on the damage incurred to helmets worn by motorcyclists involved in accidents. His analysis was extremely detailed; in fact it was far too detailed for me to go into here, but it was extremely important.
What I am going to do is tell you in a nutshell, what parts of your head are most likely to be hurt in a motorcycle accident, based on Herr Otte’s findings. The rest is up to you…
Take a motorcycle helmet and look at it from the front. Now imagine it is divided into three sections; the top (the cranium area) the middle (the area most likely covered by the visor) and the bottom (on a full face helmet, this would be the chin guard area).
If you were involved in a motorcycle accident, and you hit your head you would have a 35% chance of the impact occurring to your chin area, 10% to your visor area, and 22% chance of the impact occurring to your front cranium area.
Now turn the helmet around. Looking at it from the back, divide it in two down the middle. In an accident, if you hit you head, you have a 16% chance of impact occurring on the back of your head to the left side, and a 17% chance of impact occurring on the back right side.
Conclusion? Well, this is only my personal conclusion but I would say the following…
The safest helmets are full face helmets…
Second would be three quarter helmets with visors…
Third would be half helmets…
Last would be novelty helmets.
There are lots of reasons people wear helmets. However, if safety is your main consideration, then take a good look at the full face helmets on the market, take some time and find one which you can wear comfortably on every ride.
When dirt bike racing was in its infancy riders wore whatever was available to protect themselves. Open faced helmets, Jofa pants, leather protection… as the protective equipment was not specifically made for dirt bike racing, riders looked more like confused hockey playing bikies than dirt bike racers!
As the sport (best sport in the world mind you :) ) became more popular, the growth was then able to sustain ‘parallel’ or complementary manufacturing industries. Companies like JT USA, Sinisalo etc. could now focus primarily on making only motocross gear.
More money was now being pushed into research and development of motocross gear,
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There is some great looking motorcycle clothing on the market these days, but believe me not all of the motorcycle clothing offers as much protection as you think. In Europe, for motorcycle clothing to be lawfully sold as “safety clothing, it has to pass a series of European standards, which are pretty lengthy but are available on my website. The standards cover the clothing's performance in abrasion, tearing and impact tests, and when they have passed; they are sold with the CE mark. However, no such regulation is available in the USA, so what should you look for?
Quality motorcycle gear combines comfort, style, fit, durability, weather protection, and armor. The bottom line with equipment is, you WILL eventually fall, and when you do, you will most likely become very close friends with the pavement. So you need the "maximum impact and abrasion resistance" as possible.
Armor is extra padding sewn into the jacket or pants to cushion likely spots of impact. Road rash is the not so fun part about riding a motorcycle. It is painful and bloody, but impacts can cause serious and sometimes fatal internal damage. So shoulders, elbows, buttocks, and knees are spots that you
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Most motorcyclists put their bikes away sometime around October or November, and leave them tucked up in the garage until March or April. Some of us are more foolish and ride all year round. Keeping the motorbike in good order through the winter requires work and I hope to write about this soon.
Keeping warm is the other problem. I have been riding through 15 winters now, and I have learnt an awful lot, mostly the hard way. It is a cold and fresh November day as I write this and I've been out on the bike. I would like to
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A motorcycle helmet is one of those essentials that will help save your life should you have an accident while riding your bike. This will protect your head from a damaging and even potentially fatal head injury. Motorcycle helmets are so important that state lawmakers have even included a directive in the state laws that orders all people riding the motorcycle to wear helmets.
Some people though do not understand the importance of this accessory. In fact, some people do not even like wearing it because it is too heavy and too suffocating. Others find it a killjoy to not be
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