SHARP website

A while ago, I was invited by SHARP to an open day at their helmet-testing facility in Salford. They had contacted a number of motorcycle bloggers and hoped to get some feedback and opinions and - I assume - some publicity broadcast through the blogosphere. I wasn't able to make the open day because of lecturing commitments, but Highwaylass was, and wrote about it here.

Yesterday, they contacted me again and asked for opinions on the new website. I visited and gave them some feedback. In my opinion, it's a pretty good site, with a lot of information and tools for comparison between lids and so on. Although SHARP has been controversial (Arai, who some regard as making the best helmets in the world, have criticised the testing methods), it remains a worthwhile attempt to encourage helmet makers to compete on safety as well as graphics, styling and which racer they manage to sponsor this year. The EuroNCAP programme has been successful in doing this for the car industry, so maybe SHARP will have similar results for crash helmets.

So go and have a look at the site and see what you think. SHARP have put the media side of the operation in the hands of a company called Brando Social, and the lady who contacted me, Sarah Austin, says she would be interested in any feedback from blog readers. You can contact her at sarah.austin@brandosocial.com.

For what it's worth, my 'main' helmet (a Shoei XR1000) rates only three stars out of five. It's well-made, comfortable and doesn't mist up. My 'reserve' helmet (a Caberg V2R costing a third as much as the Shoei) rates five stars, but the plastic creaks and the visor mists up in an infuriating way. I take the Shoei by choice, every time, three stars or no. The key thing is to wear a helmet. After that, I reckon it's degrees of perfection they are talking about. Anything with the appropriate certification will protect you.

The helmet I am wearing for local rides in all this nice weather is an open-face made by Can, cost me under £30, and doesn't even get a mention by SHARP. Heh.

Helmets 2

Writing the recent post on helmets reminded me of an incident with a cheap helmet many years ago, which convinced me that helmets, however cheap and nasty, are very strong and highly likely to save your bonce if you ever go arse-over-tit.

When I had a bike as a student, back in the Napoleonic Wars, I only had one helmet - the cheapest I could get, as I was an impoverished student on a grant (yes, that long ago) of £305 per term [1]. However, if I needed to carry a passenger (like a girl, perhaps?), I would need another one. A friend sold me an old one that he no longer used; I think I paid 50p for it. It looked a bit like this:



only this one was a lovely pea-green in colour, and rather battered. I couldn't stick the green, so I sprayed it black and carried it everywhere (well, you never know ...). It was worn by several lady passengers, and eventually by the future Mrs GFGN on a tour of Southern Ireland. It must have done thousands of miles either strapped to my pillion seat or rattling around inside a top-box.

After a while, I started to have a conscience about this. For one, it was second-hand, and everyone knows that second-hand lids are dangerous. One drop on a hard surface and a helmet is scrap, and if you don't know its history, how can you be sure it hasn't had its one fall already? And for two, everyone also knows that cheap polycarbonate helmets (of which this was a shining example) are weakened by the adhesive in stickers and by spray paint. This one had had the lot. I finally decided that it didn't owe me anything, and that I should get rid of it. But the responsible person doesn't just throw it away, as it may be picked up by someone else and used, and if they had a crash and died it would be sort of your fault, and ... you know what I mean. So I decided to smash it into pieces. After all, with all that damage and weakening, it couldn't be difficult, could it?

Bad idea.

I hit it with a hammer. The hammer bounced off. I hit it hard. The hammer bounced off violently. I hit it with a 2lb lump hammer. The hammer rebounded and damaged my wrist. I put it on the floor and stamped on it. I nearly broke my ankle. I am not a small chap, never have been, but I can honestly say that I put all my weight and all my strength into destroying that helmet. I took most of the paint off, right enough, but I couldn't do anything to the structure beyond scratching it. Eventually, I took the intelligent way out and sawed it in half.

If you were wearing that and went under an 18-wheeler, I can guarantee that you would be strawberry jam, but the helmet would just ping out from under, land in a tree, and be good for another 20 years. Lesson - even the cheapest helmets are stronger than you would believe.

[1] And I finished my first term with 2p in my pocket, having had to hitch-hike across the Pennines. No student loans then. I was proud; Dad was furious. He reckoned I should have been able to save something out of all that money.

Helmets

A good crash helmet is worth its weight in gold. I don't buy the "if you've got a ten dollar head, get a ten-dollar helmet" argument. With all the certification processes both in Britain and in the EU, I doubt it's possible for an unsafe helmet to get to market these days. Even the cheap ones look good now. What you pay for in a good one is comfort and general useability - a lining that won't feel and smell like a dog's bedding after two months, a visor that resists misting-up, ventilators that work, good wind noise reduction, and so on. I don't mind spending money on something that is going to make my riding more comfortable and pleasant.

I have four helmets currently. The main everyday helmet is a Shoei XR1000, like this:



It's reasonably quiet, it has excellent anti-misting performance (important to me, as I breathe a lot) and it's comfortable even over a whole day. It should have cost me around £350, but by accepting last year's graphics (who cares?) I got it for just over £200. I also have a cheapo open-face helmet (hardly ever worn, but there for the days I want a slow ride out wearing shades), a £99 full-face Caberg that I bought when I got back into biking a few years ago, which is OK-ish and would do at a pinch if the Shoei ever got damaged, and a mega-cheap flip-front lid from Lidl. I think that one was under £40. I got it to see if I liked the flip-front idea. I used it once. It's awful.

I came across a site with some remarkable helmet graphics which I thought I would post for a laugh. Of course, we have all seen Rossi's superb effort:



And this one made me laugh too.



And not to forget the fantastic Geoff Duke:



Stylish.

More here.