Quote:
Originally Posted by oldqwerty
Veteran, thanks for your service.
I appreciate your thoughtfulness towards your wife's surviving a drop. I love an MX style helmet and goggles for running logging and forest and ranch roads and such, and even for 2-lane black top because goggles keep the dirt out of my eyes. I sometimes modify the visor attachment hardware to 1/4 turns such as Dzus for extended highway legs. It only takes a couple seconds to deal with such fasteners. I cut a pattern from a shoe box to use to cut static window tint to slap inside the goggles for running without a visor on sunny days. Well worth the effort.
The best helmet is the one that fits, regardless of cost. Tight spots transfer energy without dissipating or distributing, increasing the likelihood of injury. Loose spots allow shift before slamming in to the head, increasing the likelihood of injury. Helmet fit should match head shape as well as size. Ask any EMT that's scraped up a few carcasses with ill fitting helmets.
I look for DOT, but avoid SNELL like the plague because to need the level of protection a SNELL helmet provides would pretty much equal two RX3s running WFO having a head-on. Generally, a not-SNELL DOT will be destroyed and run out of protection about when a SNELL starts to fail and starts to protect. I've seen lots of scratched up SNELL helmets not crushed on unconscious riders, and lots of not-SNELL helmets destroyed, yet the riders were able to jump up and pick up their own bikes.
Structural failure provides the third means engineered into a helmet to prevent energy from reaching the head--absorbing energy through crushing the helmet's structure. A structure that doesn't fail transmits energy directly to the head. Not good.
Please encourage your wife to seek a softer, non-SNELL helmet, especially if she is a slow-down-and-smell-the-road-kill rider. She will be much better protected by a cheaper, softer helmet doing the type of riding you described than by a high dollar competition rated SNELL model. Besides, for the same money she can have a variety of helmets in different colors and styles to fit her moods.
|
Good stuff, Thanks. My personal go-to helmet, (although I own several that are bigger name brand), is a Fly trekker in H-Viz yellow. Good fit and if they don't see me; they probably don't have good enough vision to drive in the first place. I've never had problems with it up to and exceeding the speed limit. It's a little louder than I like on the highway, but I listen to an MP3 playing softly, so it's not THAT loud.