Quote Originally Posted by Jim2 View Post
http://www.motorcyclistonline.com/ge...helmet_review/

Motorcyclist lost Shoei and Arai as advertisers after the above article was published.

Price and "features" are secondary to design, construction, and fit when it comes to helmet performance.
That's a great article. An excellent response letter to SNELL too. Some bits of interest to NZ policy makers on speed, accidents and the "bigger the mess" rubbish:

"Even though many motorcycles were capable of running the quarter-mile in 11 seconds (or less) and topping 140 mph back in '81, not one of the 900-odd accidents investigated in the Hurt study involved a speed over 100 mph. The "one in a thousand" speed seen in the Hurt Report was 86 mph, meaning only one of the accidents seen in the 900-crash study occurred at or above that speed. And the COST 327 study, done recently in the land of the autobahn, contained very few crashes over 120 kph, or 75 mph. The big lesson here is this: It's a mistake to assume that going really fast causes a significant number of accidents just because a motorcycle can go really fast.

Another eye-opener: In spite of what one might assume, the speed at which an accident starts does not necessarily correlate to the impact the head—or helmet—will have to absorb in a crash. That is, according to the Hurt Report and the similar Thailand study, going faster when you fall off does not typically result in your helmet taking a harder hit."

Summary is the speed does not equal higher impacts to the head, and the vital coefficient is the height the head falls from, which is a max. of 8' in a highslide (and very, very, rare) and usually a low height in a low-slide.

Article really confirms what we all know - nearly all motorbike accidents that do not involve acohol are close-to-home intersection collisions where cars pull out into our way. And no open-road or speed enforcements campaign can affect this truth at all. Only better driving can.

All very interesting!