Open face helmets question

[cc1085]

Open face helmets are great. . . . . . until a cager 'didn't see you mate' and you go over the top and skate along solid road on your face. . . Not pretty.

[002]

Open face helmets are great. . . . . . until a cager 'didn't see you mate' and you go over the top and skate along solid road on your face. . . Not pretty.

Shit Happens !

Having had a couple of scrapes,either been lucky or all the stories are a little exagerated !

Could be dead tomorrow so I'm enjoying the NOW !

Jethro

[guest18]

I used to believe that "ahem, harumph" years ago... but having stepped off a couple of times, and with the assistance of cagers, I've yet to hit my chinbar on the deck, and knowing quite a few couriers, and others, who've hit the ground pretty hard over the years it's astonishing how few beat up the chinbar... it happens, but not that often...
The back of the helmet gets it regularly, the sides quite often, in *fast* (and I mean mostly illegally fast) crashes sometimes the front quarters of the visor... but the chinbar? I struggle to remember when I last saw one with damage.

Also I have to look at the likelihood of me needing a chinbar against the perceived benefits, and tbh unless I'm riding like a berk or doing trackdays the risks simply aren't that high. Particularly as personally I'd be mostly wearing one on dry days when the sun is shining, eg good vision and bags of grip...

Of course if your actually worried about the statistical risk of head injury you shouldn't be getting in your car without a lid (unless it's a very modern one with side airbags etc) as crash for crash the statisticians have alleged car drivers are more likely to suffer head injuries than bikers (look at the proximity of the b pillar, think side impact, and remember that your natural instinct when you fall is to stick your arm out and pull your head away from the impact... something that's harder to do in a tin box, the arm thing is one of the reasons why rally drivers are advised to leave the windows rolled up!!(in addition to aerodynamics))

[cc1085]

I have a titanium lower jaw. . .

[guest18]

you'll be alright then 

[guest18]

trying this reply again as my original seems to have dissapeared 
An unverified article from the web, anyone able to confirm or deny the truth of it?

During World War II, an English neurosurgeon named Cairns compared the head injuries of crashed motorcyclists wearing helmets. Cairns, a Professor of Neurosurgery at Oxford University, noted that helmeted motorcyclists who had broken their facial bones had less serious brain injuries. Clearly, some impact energy had been absorbed by the face or the helmet. From those early studies, the suggestion came that all motorcyclists should wear a helmet.

The only types available then were "inverted pudding bowl" styles that barely covered the short hair style of the day. These had an inner lining of cork or pulp that was used to absorb energy. During the 1960s, the fighter pilot style became popular because it covered the whole scalp, came in colorful fiberglass shells, and had better energy absorption material inside. Gradually helmet standards arose to ensure that helmets were constructed to a standard level that assured adequate impact performance in controlled helmet impact tests.

During the 1970s, full-face helmets (fighter pilot style plus facial protection) gained popularity. Manufacturers argued that if that fighter pilot style helmet had a chin bar, then the whole head and face could be protected. But this presented the helmet standards committees with a dilemma: How to test the performance of the chin bar component when no one was sure about how far it should deflect upon impact? Some said the chin bar should be soft and pliable. Others said it should be hard and inflexible. The rigid school won, and efforts were made to stiffen the chin bar by incorporating strong materials to increase its rigidity.

Early medical reports of facial injury patterns in motorcyclists supported the use of full-face helmets because hospital accident and emergency departments were treating far fewer facial cuts and abrasions among bikers wearing full facial protection. Indeed, it became rate to see an injured motorcyclist with a facial bone fracture if he wore a full-face helmet. All was well for motorcyclists who came to hospitals for treatment after a crash that involved a head impact.

But what about that ever-growing band of motorcyclists who didn't make it to the hospital? Many died in helmets that fitted well, were well adjusted, and were firmly in place at the time of the crash. Of course, some of these had fatal chest and abdominal injuries, but too many seemed to be dying from impacts they should have survived.

During the 1980s, reports from road accident research units worldwide showed an increasing incidence of a particular fatal skull injury among motorcyclists wearing full-face helmets. This common fatal injury was a skull base fracture -- a severe crack across the bones on which the brain sits. To try to explain how these devastating injuries were happening, some associates and I looked in depth at a small number of motorcyclists who had been fatally injured while wearing full-face helmets. At this time, the latest X-ray equipment available for patients with head injuries was computerized CT scanning (CAT scanning). CAT scans could be converted into three-dimensional images to help plan the surgery that crash victims often required. Using CAT scanning techniques, we compared the patterns of injury among 50 motorcyclists admitted to hospitals with 24 motorcyclists killed from similar impacts during the same period. We retrieved the helmets worn and also studied them with the CAT scanner.

Each motorcyclist's head was considered as a four-layered unit: 1) the helmet, 2) the scalp and facial skin, 3) the skull and facial bones, and 4) the brain. Detailed scientific information was gleaned from each of these layers. That information was then fed into a computer-based coding system for analysis. In addition to the CAT scan information, a detailed autopsy was performed on the fatally injured group. An independent neuropathology review was also performed on the brain of each motorcyclist killed.

When analyzed, our results showed that motorcyclists with broken facial bones usually had been wearing helmets that gave little or no facial protection. Furthermore, they had little on the way of brain injury. In contrast, those motorcyclists killed outright often had no facial injury, even if they suffered an impact to the front of the helmet. They did, however, have skull base fractures and unsurvivable brain injuries. Apparently, the blow to the chin bar had been transmitted to the chin strap, increasing its tightness sufficiently to drive the lower jaw upward into the base of the skull. The upward force into the skull base, then, may have caused the fracturing and subsequent brain damage.

The brain damage was concentrated at the critical brain stem region where the spinal cord effectively "plugs into" the base of the brain. Damage in that region is usually instantly fatal.

How Helmets Can Kill

1. Impact to the lower face bar is transmitted via the jaw to the skull.

2. The chin strap forces the jawbone upward.

3. The brain stem is severed.

4. The Helmet Rotates - This pattern of death emerged after four years of research.

Were our findings only present by chance in the sample of motorcyclists we studied? To find out, we performed a second study of 988 brains from autopsies performed on road accident victims. These 988 included 36 cases of unequivocal brain stem injury. The proportion of motorcyclists in that series was double the expected figure, and of the 15 motorcyclists, 13 were known to have been wearing helmets at impact and 11 had been wearing full-face helmets. Furthermore, the principal impact point was the chin bar in one of the bikers.

These findings strengthened the possibility that a blow to a rigid chin bar could be transferred via the chin strap to the lower jaw and then to the skull base, with fatal consequences to the fragile brain stem. If this were so, then how could it be prevented? In collaboration with engineering scientists and computer-aided-design (CAD) experts, we devised a series of solutions. Essentially, they involved the incorporation of an energy absorber into the chin bar of a full-face helmet. This would reduce the impact energy transmitted to the brain stem and, hopefully, transfer a potentially fatal impact victim into the survivable range. The wheels of change in altering safety designs move excruciatingly slow, the the full-face helmet with a soft, pliable chin bar extension may be a suitable alternative.

Let's face it: A motorcyclist's helmet should be worthy of the head upon which it rests.

Rodney D. Cooter, M.D.

Dr. Rodney Cooter is currently the Staff Grader in Plastic Surgery at St. James University Hospital, Leeds, United Kingdom. He trained for five years at the Weapon's Research Establishment in South Australia before completing a four-year training in engineering draftsmanship with Telecom Australia. He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide for six years before commencing surgical training. During his surgical training with the Australian Craniofacial Unit, developed an interest in the engineering aspects of injury to the head and face. In his doctoral thesis-Craniofacial Fracture Patterns-he examined the effects of helmets on injury patterns. This article follows that intensive study.

[Richard]

Serious food for thought.

Wish I could afford that Davida.

Richard

[guest18]

I have a titanium lower jaw. . .

Not knowing you I have no knowledge whether you are serious or not, or indeed if you are whether it was required due to a bike accident, if you were and it was, then apologies for my flippant reply, it followed a long and frustrating discussion on another forum with armchair experts who have plenty of theoretical knowledge of the subject we were discussing but no practical experience, and very fixed opinions.
If however you weren't serious... see my original answer 
Smudge 

[Andy M]

I've said this before, a helmet offers two or three levels of protection:

1. Protection from the normal enviroment, wind noise, flys etc. You use that protection everytime you ride.

1a. Protection from the weather, rain, fog etc. You use that maybe up to one ride in two depending on where you are, how you ride.

2. Crash protection: I think at the last count we each averaged one off every 5 years and most of those were lowsides due to ice, mud and so on. We all naturally ball up and try to protect our heads with our hands with the documented results that hands and feet take most damage.

Wearing a slice of pillar box on your head might improve 2, but you've more chance of needing it if you are deafened by the noise, can't see due to the misted visor and are thinking about the pain in the crown of your head rather than what Captain Volvo might do next.

The fact that this is such a complex subject to me means there can't be a simple answer along the lines of full face good, open face bad. If cc1085 did have a face slide that he feels would have been mitigated by a chin bar I can understand his feeling that full face is the way to go. I can counter that feeling with list of near misses caused by an overweight misting Jebs POS I wore in the mid 90's.

Until they do a controlled study where probably 10,000 riders are turned loose with maybe three pre-studied helmet designs we simply won't know. You'd need some sort of war to get that data (it exists for military helmets, hence everyone now looks more like a German than a Brit and no one looks French). Dr. Cooter's study to me shows only that you need ten times the data and that the answer then might well be a neck brace or lighter helmet instead of or as well as his chin bar buffer. 

Until then I'm going to include comfort, vision and misting when I look at helmets, which tends to push me towards an openface and visor.

Andy

[robG]

Bell used to have a slogan along the lines of ;

' if you've got a ten dollar head wear a ten dollar helmut '

That about sums it up really. Many years ago , a chum of mine had an off ,during the course of which he munched his way through the screen on his 900ss. As a result , he lost several teeth and required a number of stiches. This prompted him to use a full face lid from that point on . It happens.
Like anything , it's our choice as to what we stick on our swede . I'm happy to spend £160+ on an Arai ,because this is what I want to wear .

Rob .

[guest18]

The fact that this is such a complex subject to me means there can't be a simple answer along the lines of full face good, open face bad....
Agreed, frustrating, but agreed!

...Until they do a controlled study where probably 10,000 riders are turned loose with maybe three pre-studied helmet designs we simply won't know. You'd need some sort of war to get that data (it exists for military helmets, hence everyone now looks more like a German than a Brit and no one looks French)....
Although even these sorts of trials can result in skewed results because of fashion or individual prejudices, there is a story does the rounds in the military that when the US Govt trialled their current desert camouflage pattern their final trial was between three designs, one came out considerably better than the other two, however when it was shown to the Officers in charge or procurement they turned it down in favour of the second most effective because the first looked "too German", now that is apochryphal (sp?) but nonetheless believable and typical of some known decisions made in similar processes...

...Dr. Cooter's study to me shows only that you need ten times the data ...
Indeed, but even then it will be difficult due to the extremely varied, even inconsistent nature or real life crashes

...Until then I'm going to include comfort, vision and misting when I look at helmets, which tends to push me towards an openface and visor...
Although we could argue that you are comparing modern open face helmets with out of date, overweight full face helmets with lousy ventilation and limited visibility... my (ff) Arai presents less restriction to my side vision than the last "pilot" helmet I borrowed, and downwards vision isn't an issue..., however teasing aside I would pretty much agree with your criteria

Aologies for the selsctive quote, just easier to comment on specific parts!

Smudge  

[guest27]

Bell used to have a slogan along the lines of ;

' if you've got a ten dollar head wear a ten dollar helmut '

That about sums it up really. Many years ago , a chum of mine had an off ,during the course of which he munched his way through the screen on his 900ss. As a result , he lost several teeth and required a number of stiches. This prompted him to use a full face lid from that point on . It happens.
Like anything , it's our choice as to what we stick on our swede . I'm happy to spend £160+ on an Arai ,because this is what I want to wear .

Rob .

Bell also used to point out that their helmets were not intended for use above 30mph...

Keeping out of this discussion mind. - We end up in personal choice, social responsibility, risk homeostasis, age of consent etc.

R

[Andy M]

Bell used to have a slogan along the lines of ;

' if you've got a ten dollar head wear a ten dollar helmut '

That about sums it up really.

I've lost the link but there is a website that compares lids. There seemed to be a point where spending more only improved the logo's and graphics.

Andy

[guest27]

Bell used to have a slogan along the lines of ;

' if you've got a ten dollar head wear a ten dollar helmut '

That about sums it up really.

I've lost the link but there is a website that compares lids. There seemed to be a point where spending more only improved the logo's and graphics.

Andy

Compared them with what and by what method though?

R

[Andy M]

It's here:

http://sharp.direct.gov.uk/

I not sure what the testing is, but UK gov/TRL/MOT tend to be consistent if nothing else. They rate them for different types of protection but that's all the detail. 5-star lids vary from £70 to £320. You can blow £400+ and only get 3 star protection.   No open face seems to have been tested yet.

As suspected my Shuberth isn't the last word in helmet design or value for money 

Andy