I hope if you are reading this, you understand the importance of wearing helmets. There are plenty of articles with statistics and studies that prove wearing a helmet is better than not wearing one, but if you are one of those people who don't think it looks cool or believe the misinformation perpetuated by well meaning buddies, please stop reading and find somewhere else to surf.
There are alot of styles, colors and designs to choose from when shopping for a helmet but if you can't find a properly fitting helmet, your riding experience will be marred by terrible headaches and/or burning hotspots. If you can't wear your helmet longer than 30 minutes you'll likely choose not to wear the protection inorder to keep riding just to get home.
I was cursed with an unusual shaped head all my life and so will my son. Looking at my grade school pictures (and my son's), I can easily make out the egg shape of my head. Wide at the top over my ears and tapering down below my ears.
My first helmet, a very nice HJC IS Max was fine at first, but very quickly became unbearable to wear on my first road trip as soon as I hit the 30 minute mark. The excruciating pain on either side of my head above the ears progressed to the point where I couldn't concentrate enough to ride safely and the only thing I could think of was taking the helmet off.
The pain and headache stayed with me for atleast 4 hours that day after taking the helmet off so pulling into a rest stop was simply not the best option. Luckily, my wife and kids were following in a car and I could switch with her until the pain subsided. After we got home I did some research and discovered that helmets are made for different shaped heads. I found an article that detailed the base head shapes round, earth, oval, egg, reverse egg that don't quite match the naming convention that Arai uses for their helmets (oval, long oval, etc).
Of all the helmet manufacturers only Arai has a head shape classification. While the other manufactures do make helmets for different headshapes, there is nothing in the description to designate a helmet for round heads, oval heads or egg heads like me. This pretty much leaves fitting a helmet to finding a store and trying each and every helmet on for roughly 30-60 minutes. While this approach is not impossible it can make finding the right helmet take a long time.
After pondering this for a little while, I decided that the issue is due to the compression of the foam padding in the helmet liner. My HJC felt fine and fit pretty good until the foam compressed enough to impress the incompatible shapes of my helmet and my head against each other. This took roughly 20 minutes to start feeling painful progressing to impossible to wear after 30 minutes.
I decided to remove the foam liner and try on my HJC the next day and discovered instant pain since there was no foam to hide the non-conforming shapes inside the helmet. After this I ordered an AGV Mille Miglia and decided to try it on sans helmet liner and was pleased to find that there were no hotspots meaning the interior shape of the AGV was much more compatible to my egg shaped noggin even though it felt damn near impossible to put on over my head, once I was wearing it, everything felt pretty good.
Remember, helmets need to fit snugly to offer the proper protection. The outer shell of the helmet is for abrasion and penetration protection and the styrofoam inner core is for impact protection allowing your head to decelerate in a controlled manner on impact so your brain doesn't crash into the inside of your skull. If your helmet is loose, your head will not properly decelerate on impact because it will need to close the gap inside the poor fitting helmet first.
There is a popular saying: "you get what you pay for". While I'm not sure this is actually true, it seems like an excellent marketing slogan. I suspect in this day and age with manufacturing in far off and cheap places, you could very likely get more than you pay for especially when you compare products manufactured in different countries (ie China vs Japan).
references:
http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-helmets/motorcycle-helmet-faq.htm
also helpful:
http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-helmets/motorcycle-helmet-shapes.htm
There are alot of styles, colors and designs to choose from when shopping for a helmet but if you can't find a properly fitting helmet, your riding experience will be marred by terrible headaches and/or burning hotspots. If you can't wear your helmet longer than 30 minutes you'll likely choose not to wear the protection inorder to keep riding just to get home.
I was cursed with an unusual shaped head all my life and so will my son. Looking at my grade school pictures (and my son's), I can easily make out the egg shape of my head. Wide at the top over my ears and tapering down below my ears.
My first helmet, a very nice HJC IS Max was fine at first, but very quickly became unbearable to wear on my first road trip as soon as I hit the 30 minute mark. The excruciating pain on either side of my head above the ears progressed to the point where I couldn't concentrate enough to ride safely and the only thing I could think of was taking the helmet off.
The pain and headache stayed with me for atleast 4 hours that day after taking the helmet off so pulling into a rest stop was simply not the best option. Luckily, my wife and kids were following in a car and I could switch with her until the pain subsided. After we got home I did some research and discovered that helmets are made for different shaped heads. I found an article that detailed the base head shapes round, earth, oval, egg, reverse egg that don't quite match the naming convention that Arai uses for their helmets (oval, long oval, etc).
Of all the helmet manufacturers only Arai has a head shape classification. While the other manufactures do make helmets for different headshapes, there is nothing in the description to designate a helmet for round heads, oval heads or egg heads like me. This pretty much leaves fitting a helmet to finding a store and trying each and every helmet on for roughly 30-60 minutes. While this approach is not impossible it can make finding the right helmet take a long time.
After pondering this for a little while, I decided that the issue is due to the compression of the foam padding in the helmet liner. My HJC felt fine and fit pretty good until the foam compressed enough to impress the incompatible shapes of my helmet and my head against each other. This took roughly 20 minutes to start feeling painful progressing to impossible to wear after 30 minutes.
I decided to remove the foam liner and try on my HJC the next day and discovered instant pain since there was no foam to hide the non-conforming shapes inside the helmet. After this I ordered an AGV Mille Miglia and decided to try it on sans helmet liner and was pleased to find that there were no hotspots meaning the interior shape of the AGV was much more compatible to my egg shaped noggin even though it felt damn near impossible to put on over my head, once I was wearing it, everything felt pretty good.
Remember, helmets need to fit snugly to offer the proper protection. The outer shell of the helmet is for abrasion and penetration protection and the styrofoam inner core is for impact protection allowing your head to decelerate in a controlled manner on impact so your brain doesn't crash into the inside of your skull. If your helmet is loose, your head will not properly decelerate on impact because it will need to close the gap inside the poor fitting helmet first.
There is a popular saying: "you get what you pay for". While I'm not sure this is actually true, it seems like an excellent marketing slogan. I suspect in this day and age with manufacturing in far off and cheap places, you could very likely get more than you pay for especially when you compare products manufactured in different countries (ie China vs Japan).
references:
http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-helmets/motorcycle-helmet-faq.htm
also helpful:
http://www.webbikeworld.com/motorcycle-helmets/motorcycle-helmet-shapes.htm
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