Mountain Bike Helmets
Why a different helmet for everything?
Would a skating helmet be okay for riding your mountain bike? I know, socially it may look dorky, but wouldn’t it withstand a fall?? Why don’t biking helmets cover more of the lower part of the head like a skating helmet does? What about open-face motorcycle helmets, your whole lower face will be torn off.
Some helmets are designed to take more of a light repeated beating than others. Some helmet designs reflect a greater need for rearward and peripheral vision for that given sport they were designed to be used in.
A Kayaking helmet might well be expected for instance to need to endure to be practical light tapping on stones such as might happen during a roll in a river more often than a road going bike helmet would be expected to need to endure.
In fact, there should with best practices be no tapping on a bike helmet.
Most bike helmets are thus designed with a single impact (or series thereof that one might need to endure in a single crash) in mind. One reason for this is that the relative energies involved in a typical bike crash can be detrimental to survivability, your head plus a heavy bike helmet might mean your bike helmet breaks your neck by adding substantial energy to the crash.
Another reason for shorty, light weight helmets is bike equipment must be pushed by peddling and thus a heavier helmet is harder work; this means that in terms of styling, which is often set by racing people, the lighter more streamlined design wins out. And a bike helmet that is physically painful to wear because of it’s weight, or capacity to overheat the head on a hot day, is less likely to be on any given head in any given crash.
But I suspect the principle reason for “shorty” helmet designs being used in helmets for road bikes versus other types of endeavors is that bicyclists must always be aware of the constantly changing threat levels coming from the rear, thus requiring many turns of the head, but yet even still more sideways glances that would otherwise be blocked by a design offering greater on impact protection. A kayaking helmet doesn’t need as much rearward or peripheral vision as a road bike.
A Kayaking helmet used for off road use makes a tad more sense than many typical bike helmets. The speeds attained and expected load range is thus comparable. The need exists for a light tapping survivability as off roaders can be expected in many environs to lightly glance off trees with some regularity in normal use, and this might not be all that good for the long term usefulness of a bike helmet principally designed for road use and zero tapping (which could loosen the shell and cause catastrophic failure and thus lead to disabling injury or even death).
The original modern helmets were built for fighter plane flying airmen for survivability in a crash at moderately high speeds. These were hand made to fit each pilot. Most people couldn’t afford such work. Thus the modern bike helmet is adjustable in it’s fit.
Don’t neglect proper fit; and be sure to wear the very smallest helmet that will still fit your head. More foam padding is usually a bad thing. Too much foam allows the helmet to rotate in a crash. You don’t want that. Rotation doesn’t absorb energy, but rather at worst causes the helmet to need to absorb the energy of any given crash faster. The stiff foam (not the padding) in a helmet is designed for an expected load range over an expected period of time. Don’t compromise this by pouring solvents on it, or exposing it to prolonged periods in the sun. Keep the helmet clean, you’ll use a clean helmet more. But don’t use anything more harsh than mild soap with allot of water, and thoroughly rinse. Salt has been shown to affect some plastics, and foams, so wash the sweat off regularly.
Painting a helmet is usually OK, but don’t hide accident marks under a fresh paint job. If you’ve damage, likely you could have compromised the glue that holds the shell on the hard foam on some designs. This could lead to the shell popping off in an accident, and thus utter failure of the hard foam to absorb the energy of the fall and thus injury and even perhaps death.
Don’t ride to fast and expect the helmet to save you either. Even motorcycle helmets are of little use past a 35 mile per hour into a brick wall stop; and even then they won’t likely save a fellow from severe injury of death.
Uvex XP100 Mountain Bike Helmet
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