Helmets

I so wish that I could be really enthusiastic about any helmet. I am extremely embarrassed at the number of helmets I have bought over the years (many of which I still own in fact). On many occasions a purchase was made necessary because I crashed on a track somewhere (and there’s no doubt that various helmets have saved my life on several occasions – so I ought to be happy, right? ) and as the good book says, bin any helmet that has been crashed in. I value my head enough to do this. BUT – and it’s a big BUT, I have bought quite a few helmets simply searching for an ideal that I have never found.

My ideal is easy enough to specify (I am taking conformance with a recognised safety standard as a given in each case) :-

1. Flip-up
2. Lightweight
3. Quiet
4. Built-in sunvisor
5. Built-in or at least easy to fit comms
6. Useable with spectacles
7. Fog free or very resistant to fogging
8. Comfortable in hot weather and still comfortable wearing a cold weather helmet-balaclava underneath.
9. Easy to use quick release or D-rings (rather than a hard to use so called “quick release”
10. A good fit on my head and with plenty of room for my large chin.

So that’s my list. A surprising number of helmets have come close to ticking all the boxes but none have so far done so. Unsurprisingly, the relative importance of each item in the list above, varies according to eg the time of year, the type of riding I am doing and so forth. And because I always have to make compromises, that is one reason I have used to “justify” my numerous helmet purchases. Thus I justified an Arai Tour-X for off-roading, a number of different flip-ups for touring on the Goldwing and so forth.

Over the years I have had lots of helmets for track work – mainly Arai and Shoei. I have an “Arai Head” rather than a “Shoei Head” but this didn’t stop me buying Shoeis if I particularly liked the fancy graphics at the time. All of these were standard fixed shell helmets, often used with darkened visors.

As I gave up the track and spent more time touring, I started to use the flip up helmets that appeared at about the same time. These made it really easy to get some fresh air in traffic or to stop and take a photograph with removing my helmet but most of them were rather short and my chin usually pressed uncomfortably on the chin piece. This factor has prevented me from buying/using several brands like the Schuberth helmets as they are simply too short front to back. Nearly all of my flip-ups have at some stage given trouble with the chin piece. Touring in Scotland a few years ago, a Shoei flip up lost its chin piece as a retaining screw came loose and dropped in the road. Duct tape saved the day on that occasion. A BMW System 5 I still use has developed nasty habit of throwing the visor off if I am at all vigorous in tipping the chain bar upwards. Best of the breed at the moment is a Shark Evoline that I have not had for very long. It has faults which I mention later but at least the chin piece is still working.

The Arai Tour X has, on the whole been a good off-road helmet and is definitely better for my kind of riding than a full-on motocross helmet and goggles.

Arai helmets are the easiest helmets I have used in which to fit headsets. Shoei and particularly BMW are a lot harder to deal with and seem to need more scalpel work.

Arai helmets retain a closeness of fit far better than any other brand I have used. I am still using a five year old fixed shell helmet that fits as snugly now as the day I bought it – or maybe my head has grown ?

So out of my 20 or more helmets in the last 15 years or so what’s my take?

For a fixed shell helmet, I have found Arai to be the best. My Arai Quantum and Tour X helmets are really pretty good even if they fail to tick a lot of the boxes.

For a flipup, the Shark Evoline is winning hands down at present. It is rather noisy and draughty compared with say the BMW System 5 helmet but it’s more comfortable and the chin piece goes right to the back like a Roof Boxer which is nice and the built-in sun visor actually cover the eyes/road in a useful way, unlike several brands which have too small a sun visor to be useful. Also, despite having no pinlock system, it does seem to stay fairly fog free – perhaps this is thanks a coating which will wear of in time or maybe simply a result of the pretty good ventilation. However, one big drawback to the Shark is that I cannot see how to install a headset without major surgery which I have shied away from thus far. So far I have gotten by with Ultimate Ear earbud speakers but I find these get uncomfortable to wear quite quickly.