Never had anything worse than a bruised knee from one of the many cars I've managed to steer round. Must be the superior peripheral vision afforded by my open face

Sorry guys, a sample of 2 away from controlled conditions proves nothing except your own preferences. HURT etc. were fair attempts at something better but are incomplete. The only things we know are:

a) Helmets are better than no-helmet
b) All helmets currently on sale with the correct EU stickers meet the basic requirements.

I did once have an odd rash down below, maybe I should start a thread about the evils of leather trousers in hot weather

Andy

All of my crashes have been in full face helmets, so don't buy them, they cause accidents!

Thinking about it, everytime i've crashed I was wearing clothes too...

From now on, the only protection i'll use is a piano...

__________________
Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

I have used a flip front for the past 5 years or so. Much nicer to wear in hot slow riding conditions...towns etc etc.
I started with the Shoei which was excellent. I've now replaced it with a Shark Evoline. The chin bar flips right back, and the Sun visor or the clear visor can be used one at a time or both together....unlike the Shoei. Once the chin bar was up the visor stayed up, which was a pain.
With the Shoei I found that with the chin bar down, the visor was literally right in your face. The Shark seems to have a bit more room between your chin and the visor....nicer in my opinion.

So the Shark just nudges it if I had to choose a favourite.

Hope that helps!

Some very useful suggestions (and amuzing anecdotes!), thanks one and all!

I'm going to look at / try on a Caberg Sintesi. It's not that expensive, has some excellent features and good reviews. The Schuberth C3 medium is too small for me, the large too big; no good fit, don't buy! The Shoei Multitech impacts on my temples a little too much - if I have to modify it before buying it (depressing the lining to take away the impact area), is it the right helmet? I also like the Caberg's internal visor.

I just wish Arai made flip fronts - I'd buy one in an instant!

There's too much choice! The only plus side is I need to decide in the next two weeks before I set off 'round Europe . . . .

Thanks for all the info. and suggestions; I've just bought a Wine Red Shoei Multitec. VERY plush, and does the job!

Cheers again . . . .

You should read this rather damning report if you are contemplating a flip up helmet.

I don't know about you but I prefer to put my head in something that is a bit better than just meeting the " Basic Requirements" for helmet safety.

I know there are cheap & expensive full face helmets and I know that there are cheap & expensive flips. But I cannot understand the viewpoint that flips are as safe as full face but I am not an engineer (Mechanical, Structural or Theoretical). Nor do I think it takes one to make an informed statement about such things. All I Know is I will not trust my head and life to one, cheap or otherwise.

Everyone is different. Some feel quite strongly that flips are ok, some think open face are ok, some don't like helmets at all. Its your head.

You'd need to employ someone to develop and an carry out a suitable test then, the basic ones from the 1960's are the only standards we have.

I know you all want to believe that these are something more than lumps of polystyrene, but the facts point only to some early testing, developments to add practicality, some testing to show these didn't change very much and one heck of a lot of marketing. There has been no advanced testing and the only measurable change in casualty rates was when they went from no helmets to helmets. It's possible one type is better, but there is no proof. (If there was, they'd ban the lower performance helmets in Europe as this would drive sales of the safer type).

Do you suppose Brunel would have tried to make a bridge that looked like the Millau viaduct? The Victorian public and journalists looked at the Menai bridge and said it would fall down. It didn't because IBK calculated for wrought iron not just brick. The Millau bridge stays up despite looking weaker because modern cables are superior to iron chain and we can calculate the forces to a much better degree. We don't know if that plastic in the flip front was NASA grade stuff that had been abused or the same stuff as chip shop forks that hadn't.

Andy

Makes me curious as to what the mechanisms look like on other flip fronts. That article said many of them look similar to the HJC design.

The Shuberth one is similar complete with plastic bearing faces, self tappers and stamped pressings (seat belt technology) for the latch. No cable though (opens by a trigger on the side). The latch had (metal) bullet shaped bolts that look like they were intended to grip the chin bar more tightly if struck (good if you are sliding on your face, bad if choking on blood I guess). One of the reasons I binned this helmet was that the aluminium round the pivots wore oval and the chin bar was starting to stick on the catch bolts. This was at 3 1/2 years old, so the foam and other components would be worn out at about the same time, so call it the design life.

The Caberg one is similar from the outside (only ever changed a visor, my Dad's still using it).

As stated previously, the Roof is a just an open face with a shaped, opaque visor. The chin bar/lower visor pivots on an aluminium spacer held with bolts that screw into an insert held in the foam by a simple push fit. It's secured with rubbery plastic straps and press studs (if struck I would be interested to see if the chin bar would go past the closed position and drive into the wearers throat, the only thing stopping it is the friction of the pivot going past it's designed spacing, straps do nothing in compression. A cosmetic approach where the Shuberth and Caberg are engineered me thinks.

Andy

I think the SHARP tests are a little more current than the 1960s.
SHARP Helmets - The helmet safety scheme

So are the Snell standards that the same higher range helmets meet that are on sale in Europe.
Snell Foundation - helmet standards

I think I understand what you are saying but to me it seems logical (and factual) that some helmets meet the standards, others fail and others still exceed the standards. It's the later that I want to put on my head.

As I said before wear what you like, it's your head.

They are all variants of the British Standard shaped impact test. The SHARP animation is good and is an advance as they take the actual accelerometer figure to produce the score rather than just pass or fail. When the British Standard was written they were still using eggs, pedulums and lightbulbs to measure the impact force transmitted, so that's all they could do. They should make them put the Sharp stars on instead of the EC approved sticker.

No testing is done in the chin area though, hence our old friend the Roof Boxer gets 4-stars:

SHARP Helmets

Now if they repeated the back/crown/side impact on the chin, that might separate the good the bad and the ugly and stop open faced with painted visors getting mixed in with the engineered flip fronts. I bet their techs have "accidentally" done it and not many of them buy from Roof.

Andy

Apologies that the following has no "real" empirical evidence to back it up: I used to ride with a flip up helmet, then when John "Bunny" Hill of Bracken BMW was killed in a m/c crash where (allegedly) his chin-guard came off his flip helmet, I switched to full face.

Also having read Lois Pryce's South America adventure book where her riding buddy had an accident and mashed up her face while wearing an open face helmet and having a few chips on the chin of various m/x style helmets following off road crashes and also a big chip on the chin of a road bike helmet after high-siding a fully loaded Enfield Bullet in India (don't laugh : up hill, hairpin bend at 4500m on a 350cc) , I'll stick to full face as I need a chin guard down 100% of the time.

I use the "expensive" Arai brand as I hope they are better quality than cheaper lids and their size 61/62 fits my head perfectly, so I can buy mail order without trying it on first and hence save a few pennies.

cheers
Chris

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TBS.com

The Snell test has a specific chin bar test.

Snell Foundation - helmet testing

As I said earlier the Snell tests are done to the same lids available in Europe and in fact all around the world.

You can even look up what helmets are certified.

Snell Foundation - certified helmets

Although this may be where you tell me flip helmets are certified.