i am going to be racing DH this season and was wondering if body armour is necesary for DH, I have a full face and knee/shin pads, i just dont really want to drop teh extra coin for the vest. is the protection increase worth the money?
kidwoo said:Nah. Drop the money on a $500 troy lee helmet instead.
Just go pin it a few times on your race courses.
If you need armor, the answer will present itself fairly bluntly and shouldn't be hard to misinterpret.
Actually in low speed scrashes a bike specific helmet will protect you better. The truth is that unless you are very fast a moto helmet will not protect you any better.Heavey Hitter said:I have had only two major crashes and if body armour was present a cracked sternum and a jacked up back would have been avoidable. Go to greenfish adventure sports they have cheap body armour.and invest in a moto helmet not some plastic piece of crap there way stronger.:hot:
yah, i'm all for building character too. Scarless people are boring as s**t....kidwoo said:If you need armor, the answer will present itself fairly bluntly and shouldn't be hard to misinterpret.
Before I achieved long term gainful employment, I had to answer that stupid question at the end of every freaking job interview once the mandatories were covered.zedro said:yah, i'm all for building character too. Scarless people are boring as s**t....
or in my case, burning oneself for money...kidwoo said:....Rather than explain the concept of skateboarding....
Not to derail this thread, but that is a load of crap.bballe336 said:Actually in low speed scrashes a bike specific helmet will protect you better. The truth is that unless you are very fast a moto helmet will not protect you any better.
Yeah, then whats the point of a MotoX helmet in the first place. Basically you said it sucks.Radarr said:Not to derail this thread, but that is a load of crap.
Radarr said:Not to derail this thread, but that is a load of crap.
klunky said:
"Over the last 30 years," continues Newman, "we've come to the realization that people falling off motorcycles hardly ever, ever hit their head in the same place twice. So we have helmets that are designed to withstand two hits at the same site. But in doing so, we have severely, severely compromised their ability to take one hit and absorb energy properly.
"The consequence is, when you have one hit at one site in an accident situation, two things happen: One, you don't fully utilize the energy-absorbing material that's available. And two, you generate higher G loading on the head than you need to. "What's happened to Snell over the years is that in order to make what's perceived as a better helmet, they kept raising the impact energy. What they should have been doing, in my view, is lowering the allowable G force.
(...)
"The Snell sticker," continued Newman, "has become a marketing gimmick. By spending 60 cents [paid to the Snell foundation], a manufacturer puts that sticker in his helmet and he can increase the price by $30 or $40. Or even $60 or $100.....And in spite of the very best intentions of everybody at Snell, they did not have the field data [on actual accidents] that we have now [when they devised the standard]. And although that data has been around a long time, they have chosen, at this point, not to take it into consideration."
(...)
Dr. Hurt sees the Snell standard in pretty much the same light.
"What should the [G] limit on helmets be? Just as helmet designs should be rounder, smoother and safer, they should also be softer, softer, softer. Because people are wearing these so-called high-performance helmets and are getting diffused [brain] injuries ... well, they're screwed up for life. Taking 300 Gs is not a safe thing.
"We've got people that we've replicated helmet [impacts] on that took 250, 230 Gs [in their accidents]. And they've got a diffuse injury they're not gonna get rid of. The helmet has a good whack on it, but so what? If they'd had a softer helmet they'd have been better off."
183 bux! best investment I have ever made. saved me from a huge medical bill.mtnbrider said:Definately. If you don't want to spend $300+ on dainese, just get a rockgarden flak jacket. You can find them for under $200.
No I didn't. I was merely commenting at the fact that people believe that MTB helmets protect better than moto helmets. Or was that quote intended for bballe?ThePriceSeliger said:Yeah, then whats the point of a MotoX helmet in the first place. Basically you said it sucks.
I hit my head two summers ago hard enough to get my brain to rotate forward and down - it sheared most of my olfactory nerves in my nose (can't smell out of my left nostril) and pinched my optic nerve in my left eye (can't see anything out of my left eye anymore). I also had a displacement fracture through my sphenoid sinus which left me leaking CSF for 2 weeks, making my brain rest directly on my skull until the patched the crack with fat they took from my stomach. It sucks. Seeing as how I still wanted to ride my bike, in order to avoid any sort of injury like this again (I like my sense of vision and smell, be it though, they are impaired), I asked my docs (by the way, I'd like to point out here that they are doctors of medicine, not doctors of philosophy, like the quoted rocket scientist Dr. Newman) what type of protection I should use when riding my bike from not on. They all said (Couple ENT guys (one who rides MX), an ophthalmologist, an orthopedic surgeon, an oral surgeon, and a neurologist - she was the most adamant about this point as she has seen the most head traumas in her time) that I should get eye protection and DOT approved, full-face helmet. Notice that for the most part (Ortho excluded here) they are all, in one form or another, doctors who primarily work on the head and have probably seen a lot more injuries that I care to imagine. When I crashed at a race last summer and knocked myself out, the doctors told me two things: get a new hemlet, and make sure that new hemlet is a moto helmet.Your brain basically floats inside your skull, within a bath of cervical-spinal fluid and a protective cocoon called the dura. But when your skull stops suddenly—as it does when it hits something hard—the brain keeps going, as Sir Isaac Newton predicted. Then it has its own collision with the inside of the skull. If that collision is too severe, the brain can sustain any number of injuries, from shearing of the brain tissue to bleeding in the brain, or between the brain and the dura, or between the dura and the skull.
uhhh sure thing.SCABRIDER said:armor is only necessery if you plan on crashing...
sayndesyn said:Only Australians are allowed to not wear armor. I think it is in the UCI rule book somewhere. The new cool thing is no gloves because shredding your palm is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Kanter said:The 1st step is to just get people to wear fullface helmets. There are so many people that still dont. Then step 2 is DOT approved.
sayndesyn said:Only Australians are allowed to not wear armor. I think it is in the UCI rule book somewhere. The new cool thing is no gloves because shredding your palm is more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Not to nit-pick too much, but it really just depends on the individual helmet, don't you think? And to pick further D), if it is a low speed impact, probably just having something between your head and the rock/tree/car/dinosaur/trail/whatever is going to be enough to protect you from any serious injury.Bicyclist said:A DH-specific helmet will be more protective in one low-speed crash because the foam will compress more than in a MX helmet, but when you factor in multiple hard crashes, a MX helmet handles multiple impacts much better. That being said, I still run a DH helmet.
Radarr said:Not to nit-pick too much, but it really just depends on the individual helmet, don't you think? And to pick further D), if it is a low speed impact, probably just having something between your head and the rock/tree/car/dinosaur/trail/whatever is going to be enough to protect you from any serious injury.
I was referring more to the difference between individual helmet brands, not so much the difference between Moto-approved v. non-approved. For example, a Prime full face helmet compared to an O'Neal MX helmet. The Prime will compress the foam if you look at it wrong, whereas the O'Neal won't.Bicyclist said:Not really. The DOT or Snell standard outlines requirements the helmet must make. The requirements for DH are a little different than those for riding a motorcycle on the road (which is what these standards are for).
I agree that anything will help protect you from serious injury at low speeds.
Companies have to meet a standard to call it a bike helmet but it's a pretty easy test to pass.Radarr said:I was referring more to the difference between individual helmet brands, not so much the difference between Moto-approved v. non-approved. For example, a Prime full face helmet compared to an O'Neal MX helmet. The Prime will compress the foam if you look at it wrong, whereas the O'Neal won't.
Is there a requirement/standard DH helmet rating system?