denada

he rides his road bike on a mup from time to time. took a look at his helmet recently and it seemed like it was from the 90s. i wanna do what i can so if my pops falls down his brains make it ok. obviously want it to have MIPS of Wavecel. any ideas? not looking to spend stupid money, but there's lots of sales going on right now. we got the same size head, so i can try it on for him.

again, he only rides a road bike on a mup.

noodle soup

are Mups softer than other pavement?

Trakhak

Any of the Bontrager wavecel helmets should be fine. The higher-priced helmets are usually a bit lighter and sometimes a bit better ventilated, but even the manufacturers don't claim that the pricier helmets offer more protection. Just determine the circumference of his head with a tape measure and pick up or order a helmet of the appropriate size.

denada

^thanks!

na, it's regular pavement.


certainly looking for more opinions, because if it's really gotta be bontrager, ok. but in my mind that brand is just spending twice as much any item's worth for the B. of course not one of them is on sale at rei. suppose people seem to like that starvos MIPS road bike helmet. and looks like i do get 20 percent off for being a member. edit: oh my ******g god rei closed its stores. take my business to somewhere real.

i got a centro, but i'm pretty sure those are specifically for commuting. sure it works for either, but might as well get him the perfect helmet.

Pirkaus

Select a helmet you think he'd like, and as long as it meets THESE STANDARDS buy it.

Pirkaus

I was hit by a car back in July, the GIro Foray helmet saved my brain. I broke the windshield where my head hit, I did get a level 3 concussion, but no permanent damage. Be sure the helmet you buy, is something he will wear, it won't work sitting in a closet.

MoAlpha

The older one is, the worse the potential consequences of any head bump. That said, who knows?

bruce19

Whatever you buy make sure it fits comfortably. My GF has a Kask Mojito that I liked a lot. So, when I saw a killer sale on a Kask Protone I scooped it up. Unfortunately, it just never fit my head right. I ended up selling it to a friend and bought a Rudy Project that fits really well. There are a lot of good options at reasonable prices.

canklecat

You can buy a POC Omne Air Spin (Spin is POC's simplified version of MIPS) from Competitive Cyclist for around $75 (whoops, price has gone back up to $116, although it's often discounted to $75). Good helmet, comfortable with excellent air flow for cooling, an thicker EPS foam than many helmets, especially at the rear.

I bought one at full price ($140 or so) last summer intending to use it only for rides on my upright hybrid, but it was so well ventilated I ended up wearing it often on road bike rides on the hottest days.

It's less mushroom-head looking than the POC Octal and Ventral roadie helmets. POC pinched a few pennies here and there to meet a price point, so the rear of the harness is a bit fussier to adjust to put the dial area in the hollow at the rear base of the skull, where it holds a helmet most securely.

POC's SPIN system is mostly just strips of very comfy gel pads covered in a slick, velvety and durable material. It's much less cluttered inside than a MIPS harness, which probably helps air flow. The POC sits lower on the head and feels more secure than my Bell helmets.

The strap isn't really adjustable around the ears, a complaint some users have. If the "Y" juncture doesn't feel quite right under the ears, the only adjustment is to wiggle the plastic holder around a bit. That worked well enough for me to make it comfortable. But folks who are accustomed to fully adjustable straps and prefer to shove that plastic doodad down by their chins will find the POC odd. I suspect POC did this to minimize the way the helmet could be worn incorrectly. The strap "Y" juncture needs to be directly under the earlobe to hold securely, so they took away any choice for that. It annoyed me at first but I don't think about it now.

The chin strap is adjustable as normal for any helmet, a bit nicer than my Bell helmets.

Size runs a bit large for the Omne Air Spin. My noggin measures 59cm, right in the gray zone between medium and large for most helmets. I can wear Bell in medium or large, no problem. But I could have gone with the POC Omne Air Spin in medium and saved a little weight and bulk. However with the large I can wear a knit cap under the helmet in winter, so it worked out fine.

eduskator

I would get whatever brand fits, is on sale and has a good reputation. Make sure he tries the helmet as he might not like the feel.

Even if it would be, the human head is still too soft to notice the difference

WhyFi

As previously mentioned, just make sure it fits. Also, size alone isn't enough - shape is important, so while you two may wear the same hat size, you might not prefer the same brand helmets.

Specialized had some decent helmet sales going on recently, not sure if they're still going. Regardless, I think that they have MIPS options starting under 100 bucks.

noodle soup

That was the point I was getting at.

Iride01 

The best helmet is the one he will wear. So don't try to force something that might not be worn. Even color might be a issue.

Does he ride alone? Are the places he rides lonely enough that he might crash and not have help for 5? 10? 15 or more minutes? You might want to consider Specialized's Angi crash detection. However that requires a smart phone too, and a person that is somewhat used to using apps on a phone. I got the S-works prvail II with angi. It fits well, is light and cooling airflow is great. However they sell the sensor alone that can be put on most any helmet. I know someone that has both the Garmin incident detection and Angi. He tells me that Garmin and Angi sometimes have false alerts, but can be canceled before they send. However he has also had crashes that the garmin didn't detect any of them, but Angi did.

But even my 10 year old Giro Interceptor saved me last year and it was then a cheap buy. It was cracked in eleven places and I lived. So if all you do is make sure it's a new helmet that is CPSC certified, which all sold have to be in the US, then you have a pretty good level of protection.

MIPS, Wavecell and others are really much like the talk of aero bike parts and such. IMO.....But if you can afford it easily, then certainly get one of them!

August West

I would definitely try to get him to go shopping with you if at all possible so you can pick a helmet that fits properly and is comfortable.

Link to the Viginia Tech helmet test results.

eduskator

Yep. A helmet is definitively not something you buy for someone else. It's just too personal.

canklecat

I see the Virginia Tech tests rate the Bell Formula MIPS highly. That's been my main helmet for a couple of years. Good helmet, and often available discounted now. It was only $75 when I bought it in summer 2018, and I've seen it as low as $35-$50 since then.

It's a much more refined helmet than the price point would indicate. The soft EPS foam is fully covered by polycarbonate under the rim to minimize scuffing from ordinary use -- the POC Omne Air Spin EPS foam is exposed on the rim.

The Bell includes a sweat drip channel that really works. I was skeptical about that feature until I tried it in summer.

It's comfortable and easy to adjust to suit my noggin.

Ventilation isn't quite as good as the POC, but it's not bad. The POC is probably less aero, so the air scoop design comes at a cost. And the Bell uses the MIPS harness which is pretty cluttered and probably interferes a little with airflow. But I had no problems with it during many hot Texas summer daytime rides.

Fendertele

I went with Giro Foray mips for myself and my wife. Comfortable and adjusts well. Reasonably Priced for mips and can vary by color on Amazon.

Iride01 

And you know..... I might have gotten that helmet too but when I looked at it in the store, I just couldn't get the idea out of my head that the logo on the front made me look like Teal'c from Stargate SG-1.

Of course most everyone has their logos or names prominently displayed. But at least it's on the side where it only seen briefly in passing. <grin> Not coming at you like a light on a freight train.

RiceAWay

I wrote papers all about helmets from the time they were introduced. The early helmets were for motorcyclists and had a thick hard shell of fiberglass. They did not actually protect the head from a collision but they were designed for RACING and not for riding on the street. In racing you almost never hit something, you slide out. This put the hard shell in between you and the asphalt and relatively light bouncing along the ground that caused. When I gave up motorcycle racing I was elected the safety director of the American Federation of Motorcyclists. So I had some credentials for Bell to allow me in and show me their theories, construction and testing procedures. Being an engineer it was easy to see that a helmet could really not do good for a normal crash of a street rider.

Clock ahead to another 10 years when I began riding bicycles for my health. I again looked at helmets though from the angle of a bicyclist. And again they come up so inadequate that I wrote a paper showing that there was no change in fatalities between before helmets were in use and after. The long and the short of it is that people are killed on bicycles by being struck HARD by cars and whether or not you get a head injury as well doesn't make any difference.

But in the most common bicycle injuries which are falling off in a single vehicle accident helmets are (in general) not stressed for head injuries but in the same sort of dragging injuries mentioned above but at much lower speeds. In this helmets are quite effective and so I recommend that people wear helmets. But anyone that claims that their live's were saved by a helmet does not understand physics.

Enter Trek with REAL engineering. Their wave-cell is designed to lessen or prevent the most dangerous thing that usually happens to cyclists. They fall off, hit their heads and receive a serious concussion. I have been a victim of this and must take anti-seizure medication for the rest of my life and it isn't fun. It has many nasty side effects not to mention that the concussion itself robbed me of a physical sense of balance. I can only remain upright by always maintaining a visual horizon. If I look straight up or the like I completely lose my balance and fall over. I can no longer walk a straight line and so fail a drunk test while totally sober. (I only lightly drink beer or wine anyway)

Trek's engineered helmet through their Bontrager subsidiary has a helmet that is 38 times less likely to cause a concussion. I have no other data but theirs but ANYTHING designed to lessen the chance of a concussion is obviously a much superior product to one that thinks that the ASTM F1447 (follow up to the Bell standard) which is designed NOT to prevent concussions but to prevent broken skulls, is a superiors product. Believe me, anyone that has had a collision hard enough to break their skull has a lot more problems than that.

Therefore, I too, very much recommend the Bontrager wave-cell helmet (and NOT the one that also contains MIPS technology which partially defeats the action of the wave-cell).

And it is a damn good thing that bicycles balance themselves since I've put in a whole lot of miles in which I could get off the bike and fall over.

canklecat

Indeed.

But the Bell Formula MIPS doesn't have prominent logos. Just a couple of small Bell logos embedded on the sides, and a single MIPS sticker that peels off.

POC has some crazy prominent branding tho'. Especially the Omne Air Spin, which looks like a billboard from some angles. Way too much branding. Good helmets, tho.

Iride01 

Well now I'm kicking myself for not going and looking at it in person. After cracking my old one, I'd been making do with my wifes old Giro Interceptor which was a tad tight on me. I could be confusing it with a POC as I looked at them too. Maybe I looked at another Bell model before that one came out since it was back in December or January.

It looks like that particular Bell will flow plenty of cooling air through it which is why I went with the Prevail II. The Giro Aether I really wanted was too pricey and I'd still have to add Angi. Some of the Specialized helmets and gear are quite a bit cheaper with their Spring Sale prices which I think go to mid April.

denada

i appreciate all the suggestions and will look into them. i can send him pics so he can have input on color and stuff, but we live in different states. even if we did not, reality is he would not go helmet shopping. that's why i am doing this. i have to do my best without him there to try it on. if he doesn't like it, he can always ship it back to me and i'll try again.

i asked my mom to measure his head, but he has the corona virus right now so no one can get near him. there is a chance he might not need this helmet, but i pray all day that is not how things go. he supposed to be over the worst of it, but then yesterday docs said things were not progressing right. he is going to make it. has to.

thanks Iride01 for mentioning the crash detection system. i will look into it.

i want to keep my father safe. sometimes we do not consider our own safety as strongly as our family members. he's my dad, so i am going to figure this out for him. while a helmet cannot prevent all cycling injuries, it can help.