Motorcycle Helmets

I recently completed the MSF BRC to get my motorcycle endorsement and, for the better, was told in excruciating detail how important protective gear it; specifically helmets. As if it wasn't obvious enough, skimping on a helmet is NOT the place you want to save money on gear. Brain injuries are the #1 cause of death in motorcycle accidents. Furthermore, DOT certification is a very minimalistic standard. The 50 dollar helmets you buy at Wal-Mart are typically DOT certified. To get a DOT certification, it pretty much has to survive an impact of 15 miles per hour. When was the last time you were driving 15 miles per hour? I can bicycle faster than that. Snell certification is a much higher standard of helmet certification. Now, any helmet is better than no helmet. You don't necessarily have to get an Arai Corsair-V, but just plan for what you plan to be doing. Even riding from Boulder to Superior you're going to be getting up to around 60 miles per hour. If something goes wrong, you probably want your dome safe.

Now another thing about helmets is if you take a spill on one, get a new one. There's a lot of damage or structural instability which can be obscured by the paint job and the outer shell. I recently was reading a Yelp review of a local motorcycle shop where a customer gave the shop a rating of zero because he dropped a helmet on the floor and they made him buy it. He started ranting about how if the helmet is Snell approved and he should trust his life to it, how they could say it's broken after a single drop. This customer viewed it as the shop being assholes.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It's true, dropping a high grade helmet on the ground will probably not make a difference. The key word there is the word "probably". It IS however, completely plausible and possible however that the dropping of the helmet damaged it and they would be grossly negligent in selling that to a customer as a way to keep their head safe. Secondly, the customer said he grabbed it off the shelf and then dropped it. Shops keep the cheap shit out on the floor, so they probably knew the likelihood of it being damaged was even worse. I understand it sucks having to buy a helmet you dropped, but the fact of the matter is you've effectively broken the helmet. If you walked into the shop and saw someone drop a helmet, would you then buy it? Of course not!

The idea behind writing off a helmet after a single fall isn't to try to scam people into buying more helmets. A helmet is a safety measure when you get in a crash. When your head hits the median at 60 miles an hour and you get up and walk away, thank your lucky stars you bought a good helmet from a supplier who didn't drop it on the floor, and then go buy another one. Don't keep riding around with a damaged piece of equipment.