KwakNut
Senior Member
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SuzukiSavage.com Rocks!
Posts: 332
Sheffield, England, mostly.
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I wear full face on my sports bikes and open face on cruisers, mostly because I only ride low-ish speeds round town on the naked framed bikes. Must admit I enjoy the feel of the wind in the face and round the ears at low/medium speed on a warm day - I have a chromed WWII German helmet which would offer hardly any protection but is really comfortable, let lots of air through, and makes me laugh. If our laws weren’t so strict, I’d just wear goggles or wraparound shades in good weather for local trips.
I know there’s still risk of accident at low speed, but I balance the risk against the pleasure – if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t throw my leg over a bike in the first place.
Weight and level of protection/crash survivability were mentioned above.
I'm yet to notice the weight of a helmet for comfort. As for crash protection, yes, a lot of people still die when they get it wrong on a bike, but helmets aren’t designed to prevent you being squished under a truck, they stop you from getting brain damage when you head bang the tarmac coming off - the foam lining is designed to absorb those kind of shocks, and what they prevent is brain damage from low speed tumbled where people go over the bars or high side the bike and plant their head onto the road. Those sideways knocks cause bleeds which kill or disable, but with shock-absorbent polystyrene helmet inners, a lot of people are laughing and riding today who would be dead or in wheelchairs otherwise.
I also have had at least 3 helmets deeply scuffed from where I’ve been down the road, in tumbles at 40, 60 and over 100mph from sports bikes, and in each case it’s just been some paint and fibreglass, not flesh, that’s been left on the tarmac.
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