sha90

i need to get a new helmet. walmart helmets are so cheap compared to the ones at the bike shops. are they less safe? why aren't helmets just made inflatable? (not just upon a crash) they would fit better too.

Iride01 

Bicycle helmets sold in the USA have to meet specs of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. They are pretty decent. The only question will be how much more safety do you want and are willing to pay for.

What's really unanswered is how many more people would be saved if everyone used the highest rated helmet vs the lowest rated helmet.

We've got plenty of threads here where that has been thrashed and re-hashed and discussed to minutia.

So just pick your most comfortable cycling helmet in your favorite color at the price you are willing to pay.


https://helmets.org/standard.htm


Your air helmet will likely need to meet CPSC standards if you are anywhere that requires a helmet here.

GlennR

Just wrap your head with bubble wrap.

BTW... i'm joking.

dabac

Pretty much all helmets are tested to the same standards. Which means all helmets that pass testing provide AT LEAST a set amount of minimum protection.
Data on how much more protection than required that a helmet supplies is scarce.
There used to be a persistent rumor that cheap helmets actually provided MORE protection, since they generally were heavier and with less vents and cutouts.
If there ever was any truth to that, I don’t know.
But it’s easy to see where the idea came from.
Air helmets kinda-sorta already exist, look up ”Hovding”.
Whether they overall provide more protection has been somewhat debated.
The Hovding does better in some impact geometries and poorer in other.
Planning to land on a flat surface, the Hovding can do a great job.
Expecting to end your trajectory against a corner or an angle/ridge, better use a rigid helmet.

RiceAWay

I am unfamiliar with Walmart helmets but any helmet that meets the CPSC helmet standard is equally good or rather not good. Initially helmets were designed to allow you to fall 2 meters without fracturing your skull. But that isn't the danger to helmeted riders. A fall of two meters is supposedly the distance you would fall in the most common falls - falling off of your bike at a stop light. If you are involved in a motor vehicle accident you usually are so badly injured that it wouldn't matter if you have a helmet on or not. Now we might call certain types of motor vehicle accidents "fall offs" as well because they are really stupid - a couple of years ago I stopped at a four way stop intersection. Came to a stop and let everyone take their turn. Then as I was almost all of the way across the intersection a woman rolled the stop sign and ran right into me. I slid right up her hood and fell off on the right side of her car. She was only traveling perhaps 5 mph and the only injuries I sustained was a smashed big toenail and the bike was a total. Now, if an accident EVER happens to you like that ALWAYS get a lawyer and do not try to negotiate with the insurance company yourself. What I got barely paid for the damages. If I had a lawyer it would have been at minimum 10 times that amount.

In any case, the problem with a bike crash is that the true injuries do not come from a fractured skull but rather from a concussion. So a CPSC helmet approval is actually a dangerous helmet though this will IMMEDIATELY bring claims that "MY HELMET SAVED MY LIFE". If your life was "saved" it was not an accident strong enough to kill you.

However, Trek did some serious research into the proper way a helmet should work. And under the their brand name "Bontrager" they market a helmet with the appellation of "Q-cell". There is not enough data to know if they really increase the safety of a helmet but I bought one and wear it because it actually has some science behind it.

But as a resume, I raced motorcycles with the American Federation of Motorcyclists (AFM) and checked out helmets since the speeds are so much greater. Well, road racing crashes aren't usually what you could call a crash but losing traction and sliding out. Motorcycle helmets have a hard shell and so the actual foam padding inside the helmet doesn't do anything, the hard shell allows your head to bounce and slide along the ground without skin damage,. When I realized that I was doomed to a perennial third place I retired and they asked me to become the Safety Director. So I went down to Bell Helmets and talked to them about their safety standards. Believe me, the hard shell was by far the most protection. And as proof, Many years later I was riding through a parking lot at about 5 mph and a first generation carbon fiber fork fell apart and dropped me on my face/helmet. I was released from the ER as perfectly fine. I wasn't and spend the next two years having no idea what I was doing. I couldn't even remember to eat. When a friend asked me to the Club dinner and while there his wife, a nurse, observed me having a seizure. He made arrangements for a Stanford neurologist to see me. The neurologist told my friend that he had never seen a concussion this bad. It took about six months to balance the medications required to stop several different types of seizures and suddenly it was just like waking up from a nightmare. Nothing made sense and it took me years to recover a large part of my memory. At first I couldn't even drive up to the supermarket without getting lost.

While it would probably be possible to make an inflatable helmet they would have to be especially "tuned' to the rider weight which makes it impractical. Part of the problem with helmets is that you cannot wear a helmet over a certain overall diameter since any larger it would block your vision which is especially important on a bicycle.

I suggest the Q-cell from a Trek Dealer and there is no reason to get the expensive version. I paid $100 for mine but a friend recently bought one for $60. So they are coming down in price. You can recognize them from the "standard" helmet by the padding looking like honeycomb.

indyfabz

https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-...hread-2-a.html

badger1

Absolutely! That said, the op should be looking at the wonderful, beautiful, technologically-advanced Hodvig. Dunno if it still exists (doubtful), but the concept suits.

79pmooney

Two comments here. 1) There is a feature that could make helmets significant;y better that is not addressed by the CPSC standard. Slippage to minimize head rotation as exemplified by MIPS but there are others. 2) The "best", most expensive helmets are designed to just meet CPSC (or CPSC and MIPS) so they can be as light, cool and comfortable as possible. I have no proof but I'm guessing that an $80 helmet has more protection than a $25 helmet but that a $150+ helmet is probably close the the $25 one.

veganbikes

The difference in helmets is the Wally-Mart version is likely built as cheaply as possible to barely pass CSPC standards while nicer helmets will have some R&D behind them to make them safer. My helmet is expensive yes but it is really light and really comfortable and that is important to me. I also know that Lazer is doing a lot of in house testing on helmets to improve everything including safety.


Wally-Mart might take a basic shape from the 90s and sort of recreate it and slap a Schwinn Quality sticker on it so you think their is at least a smidge of quality to it. Plus the Waltons don't need your money, they are plenty wealthy and their employees are plenty poor. Not a great business to support. Your local shop however is a good business to support and getting yourself a nicer helmet will feel better on the head. Even the base model Specialized helmets are coming with MIPS and other neat features and are pretty well designed and not super expensive considering it is a safety item.

Inflatable helmets would look pretty goofy as you can see above it looks like Spaceballs: the Movie and Victorian era wigs came together and crapped that thing out.

sha90

the cpsc standards are for hard helmets. they really should rethink things. cars use AIRbags to soften crashes. i think they should apply the same concept to helmets. vets used to put hard plastic cones to stop my pets from chewing off their stitches. they were heavy and uncomfortable. now they have soft donuts for the neck instead. makes way more sense.

sha90

that's close to what i am thinking of. no joke;p!

sha90

i did google hovding before i posted but theirs inflate on impact. i think it should just be an inflated design, like wearing a cushion on your head.

Iride01 

Were does all the hate for Walmart come? Their helmets are usually Bell, which scores high on Virginia Tech's list. https://helmet.beam.vt.edu/bicycle-helmet-ratings.html

I know a lot of people are ashamed to wear Bell anything, but for an inexpensive product they are pretty good.

veganbikes

Not all are Bell and Wally-mart Bell and bike shop Bell are of a different quality level. However yes Bell makes fine helmets.

My dislike for Wally-mart is vast but mostly has to do with massive labor and income inequality issues and destroying local business amongst other things
.

RiceAWay

Perhaps we should note that the rate of pedestrian deaths is far above that for cyclists. They have argued that this is because there are so many pedestrians vs. cyclists but I don't know if I would agree with that since people do not walk anywhere so their personal exposure is very low Yet the fatality rate of pedestrians is four times as high as cyclists. Cyclists, on the other hand have a very high exposure with hours in the saddle on even a moderate ride and being in the street and not protected on a sidewalk. The studies have shown that there is no reason to wear a helmet because the rates of mortality are so low and those fatal accidents were so serious that a helmet would have been of no assistance. However, this is an argument against mandatory helmet laws and not the voluntary use of helmets. If you believe that a helmet would help you that is all it takes for you to wear it.

Gresp15C

I think the issue is that a helmet is not just a cushion. It has to deflect, absorb, or spread out the impact. It has to be wearable with minimal discomfort, and last a reasonably long time. Now, an inflatable structured material inside a hard shell might work OK, but the closer its properties get to styrofoam, the more likely styrofoam will win out on cost.

But it's certainly an interesting area for research.

sha90

i am so sorry about your accident. how absolutely awful for you. yes, i would imagine riding a motorcycle would need a hard shell helmet. i googled the q cell helmet and i am not sure what the honeycomb is made of. it certainly is expensive. my idea is to have a hard shell but for the inside to be inflatable without changing the dimensions of the outside so it would not impair one's vision. thank you for sharing your experience. wishing you all the best.

sha90

i don't get that. sorry.

sha90

like many people, i look for the best value. i agree it is not always the best choice.

sha90

i wasn't clear. i meant just have the inside be inflatable and keep the hard shell.

Koyote

Patently incorrect. I hope this is not what you meant to state. And by the way: the Trek/Bontrager design that you refer to is WaveCel, not Q-cell.


I have two helmets from the same brand (Specialized). They have the same general design in terms of shape, vents, retention system, etc. One cost $75, the other was $250. The cheaper helmet is heavier (though comfy for all-day rides), has slightly smaller and fewer vents (though still not too hot on warm days), and significantly thicker styrofoam. I suspect it would, indeed, provide better protection in a crash.

Darth Lefty 

In motorcycle helmets there was a semi scandal about 15 years ago when motorcycling magazine published a story with data that DOT level helmets provided more protection than Snell certified helmets. They lost a lot of advertising and the fallout for the reporters went on for years. A very rare instance of enthusiast press standing up, and boy did they get slapped. The DOT only helmets were superior in the magazine’s test because they were thicker foam and made a little bit less G force, as I recall. So that might be behind any rumor that a cheap bike helmet is superior to some other standard.

This all pre-dated MIPS helmets completely, iirc.

The inflatable interior helmet is not a terrible idea, it’s how some football helmets work, I think. The idea of having some kind of eggshell plastic or foam also goes back pretty far. But of course, Trek’s version changed cycling forever. We all know that because they told us so.

Darth Lefty 

Meanwhile, on the topic of Walmart helmets, I got my boy a helmet from Walmart about a year ago. For most of that time he has refused to wear it, and since it’s only going balance bike speeds I haven’t really pressed the issue. So it’s not very used. It’s completely faded, without having been in the sun, all the plastic shell is cracked and the visor has broken off. The straps are just comically badly fitted. You get what you pay for.

veganbikes

Value is not always just initial price. A lot of people conflate the two and end up with poor value. Not specific to this situation but a common practice. I always look beyond initial value because I want to think long term unless literally just a one time use object that will get tossed or is not usable after that one use. A helmet technically is a one time use object but when you need it, it is a critical item and your actual final use of the item could be at any time anywhere for any number of reasons. Safety is more important than cost at that point. Granted that is not to say you need to spend a fortune to buy safety but weighing your options and looking at helmets more likely to see R&D that would lead to bigger safety is important.

It would most likely pop or deflate well before it needs to protect you and probably will not have the same effects that EPS foam or Koroyd or similar materials have when impacted. There is a reason behind a lot of this stuff and not because Big Foam has shut out Big Air.

RiceAWay

I don't know if you understand "standards" but if all of he helmets are designed to pass CPSC then they are all equally protective within the limits of that standard. As it turns out, foam is pretty much the same density and hence it is extremely difficult to increase the protection of a helmet if you are using foamed plastic. If you have two helmets and one is heavier than the other and they both pass the standard than all that means is that the cheaper one is built with less quality control. Larger and more vents requires a lot more care with the foam in order to retain the same standard. Now, you could, for instance, use a less dense foam which would allow more compression which in turn would reduce the maximum acceleration with a head blow, but unfortunately people will only put up with a helmet of a certain limited size so you cannot use any significant less dense foam since it would require a larger helmet with more, less dense foam.

I forgot that they now call that "wavecell" when I bought mine they called it "q-cell". They also make a high end version that includes that IRS or whatever it is called that allows the helmet to rotate within limits on your head in a crash. Their testing showed no improvement since the wavecell reduces the impact to the point that your neck is not really threatened. Like I say, there is insufficient data on whether the wavecell makes any difference but if they are at least trying to use real science then I am willing to believe them.