- If your helmet doesn’t have a chin bar (full or modular), you don’t care about your chin, teeth, or nose.
- wrt ATGATT, most of that gear will reduce or avoid injury. A helmet will prevent your death.
- If you don’t wear earplugs - even with a helmet on - enjoy your tinnitus and/or hearing loss. This is from wind noise, not engine noise.
If your helmet doesn’t have a chin bar (full or modular)
Modular helmets will not protect your face adequately in a crash. Even with a chin bar, the face part tends to open up when you hit the ground. If you value your face, get a good full-face helmet. I have an AGV K1; it’s good, fairly lightweight, acceptably ventilated, and usually under $200. You don’t need to get a Shoei or an Arai; any full-face helmet sold on e.g. Revzilla is going to be fine, as long as it fits.
Even with a chin bar, the face part tends to open up when you hit the ground.
That’s just not true.
Modular helmets are less safe than full-face helmets, period, full stop. That’s absolutely undeniable. Take a look at the SHARP ratings for the very best modular helmet they rated, the Shoei Neotec 3; “93% Percentage of impacts where the face guard remained fully locked”. That means that 7% of the time, in controlled tests, the face guard came unlocked. (BTW, A Shoei Neotec was my first helmet, before I got over my claustrophobia.) That is not something you want to worry about in a crash, especially since real world crashes are not carefully controlled.
There’s a reason that you’re not going to get away with wearing a modular helmet at a track day; they simply are not as safe as a proper full-face helmet.
The AGV K1 looks like a motorcycle helmet. Would you wear something that heavy duty for commuting on a 20-30mph scooter/e-bike? Or is there something else a little more lightweight?
Honestly … yes. On a small ebike or scooter, commuting with automobile traffic, an accident where a helmet will help you seems likely to come from a car not seeing you and hitting you at speed - more than 20 or 30 mph. The kind of thing that’s going to put you up on a windshield, or at best send you tumbling in an uncontrollable way (I’m thinking a car making a right turn across your path where you don’t have time to stop).
This applies even more if you’re a cyclist who doesn’t stop for stop signs or red lights. Not saying that you personally are one of those, but you know they exist, and such people would be well-served by a proper helmet helmet instead of a styrofoam skull cap.
I would ask yourself what you think hitting the ground face-first at 30mph would feel like, and then use that when you consider whether you want a full-face helmet or not. :)
A friend of mine crashed her motorbike a few years ago and her face bounced off the road. Her chin bar flexed inwards so much that it broke her nose and chipped a front tooth.
She was furious that the helmet didn’t protect her properly, until her husband who was riding behind her pointed out that she essentially landed face first at over 60mph, and that without the helmet, her face would have taken the full force of the landing.
