dot vs. snell, great artical in the june Motorcyclist

[hogkrazy]

I was curious when snell would have a response to the artical. I suspect the real truth lies somewhere in the middle betwen snell and dot .

[ewolnosaj]

This is not the first comparison on the subject and it will not be the last. It goes to logic when you look at the standards that the Snell rating is more highspeed/race track then real world (IMHO). I have seen other tests that had very similar outcomes.

In the end, at the failure G force of even the best helmet in the test, the rest of your body would pretty much be done anyways... Maybe your head would be good, you would still be dead or wish you were.... So does it really matter?

In the end big dollar helmets are not all that much about increased safety. It is about comfort, features, style, and bling.

All being told, I am going to go take a look at the Z1R....

i didn't read the article, but i think motorcyclist is the leader in whoring themselves to advertisers (anyone care to count the # of pages of parts unlimited ads? and that's not a dig on z1r or parts, both of which are fine companies, especially parts unlimited).

anyway, you can compare snell vs dot and write your article to pick one over the other and get your reader to believe your findings.

you can compare bsi to snell and do the same. suomy and snell have articles out there that will show you how easy it is.

for example, suomy says bsi tests more helmets and one of each batch of helmets (about 1 in 64) is tested to meet that standard. therefore because the helmet is tested throughout its production cycle its better than snell because once a model is certified its good to go.

snell says the bsi standard isn't as hard to pass as the snell standard, therefore while they test more helmets the standard is so low that it's easy to pass.

which is better? bsi or snell? who knows? it'd be nice if we could do both, but we can't.

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here's some quick commonsense realities. the outer shell's main purpose is to pervent penatration and destruction of the foam inner liner.

the foam inner liner is what protects brain matter by decreasing the rate of its deceleration in an accident (like an airbag).

now that this is clear (and i hope that the motorcyclist article made sense of this), let's move on.

i'm sure you've the 35mph side impact test that some insurance foundation is doing. the nhtsi says that 35 mph doesn't represent most accidents, since most accidents happen at a slow rate of speed.

and this is your fiberglass/plastic debate in a nutshell (and yes, it's been around for a long time, they just used to call it the snell v. dot debate).

do you want to live through the worst case scenario?

or

do you want to be 100% okay in a 100% survivable accident?

my point isn't that one is better than another. my point is one is better for a given situation than another. i personally would rather live through a brutal high speed crash. as a matter of fact, i have lived through a 100mph get-off, several of my friends have and we all had one thing in common, expensive fiberglass lids on our heads.

if you think you can't live through a 100mph get off, then get a plastic helmet and you'll likely not get a concusion if you get rear-ended by a little old lady doing 10 mph, while laughing at the fact that you could buy 7 cs-12's for the price of my corsair.