June 9, 20223 yr Thinking of buying Halford’s Advanced Ebike helmet @ £50. It meets the EU current safety standards for Ebike helmets & has a fidlock buckle etc. It does not come with MIPS. I am a leisure cyclist mostly urban use or or cycle track riding. Has anyone got experience of this helmet? Thanks
June 9, 20223 yr Thinking of buying Halford’s Advanced Ebike helmet @ £50. It meets the EU current safety standards for Ebike helmets & has a fidlock buckle etc. It does not come with MIPS. I am a leisure cyclist mostly urban use or or cycle track riding. Has anyone got experience of this helmet? Thanks Wonder what's different about an ebike helmet, speed and consequences aren't really any different. The cynic in me says a sticker and more beer tokens lost. Wouldn't a mips helmet be a better safer spend anyway?
June 9, 20223 yr MIPs isn't anything to do with certification, its a commercial IP without any true independent testing because I believe the testing was commissioned by the company itself and has nothing to do with normal certification where MIPs isn't recognised. That's not to say it won't enhance safety in certain situations but those situations are much rarer than MIPs imply with their marketing. It's no substitute for having a heavier stronger helmet that will reduce impacts more. An upgrade from a lightweight road cycling helmet to a more substantial mountain bike style helmet would be better in my opinion. So I personally wouldn't worry about lack of MIPs. The important thing is to buy a properly certified helmet and replace it as soon as the helmet has had any sort of impact. High price bicycle helmets often makes consumers more resistant to replacing them. There is a lot to be said for £15 helmets which people are happy to replace when needed rather than a £70 helmet which people are reluctant to replace.
June 9, 20223 yr Cycle helmets fly traps are not impact safety devices, they may protect your bonce from a low flying branch or if one takes a low speed tumble but in any major collision they will be next to useless. If I where a helmet it is a young dudes ski/snowboard helmet but 99.5% of the time I wear a leather bush hat.
June 9, 20223 yr It's no substitute for having a heavier stronger helmet that will reduce impacts more. It's the expanded polystyrene inner that's going to save you (and potentially the MIPS from any twisting forces). What injures you is the rapid deceleration/rapid twisting of your brain - your skull hitting the soft polystyrene means it decelerates slower than hitting a road/vehicle. Obviously, an overly-weak outer shell cracking is a failure because the polystyrene is then exposed to whatever hit the helmet. The outer shell is mostly just there to keep the polystyrene in the right place - on your head. Heavy? That increases momentum, and worsens any twisting force. You really don't want a heavy one. You want something strong enough to resist falling say 2m, but light. Buy a top quality one, look after it, and it will last until you actually need it in an accident. Replace it after a crash. Replace it when the manufacturer says replace it (5 years is typical) because the inner lining can become less effective as it gets gently bashed by your head after several years of use. Last bit - make sure it fits well, and can't get dislodged easily. The best helmet in the world is wasted if it pops off your head 1/0th second after hitting the ground/vehicle.
June 10, 20223 yr It's the expanded polystyrene inner that's going to save you (and potentially the MIPS from any twisting forces). What injures you is the rapid deceleration/rapid twisting of your brain - your skull hitting the soft polystyrene means it decelerates slower than hitting a road/vehicle. Obviously, an overly-weak outer shell cracking is a failure because the polystyrene is then exposed to whatever hit the helmet. The outer shell is mostly just there to keep the polystyrene in the right place - on your head. Heavy? That increases momentum, and worsens any twisting force. You really don't want a heavy one. You want something strong enough to resist falling say 2m, but light. Buy a top quality one, look after it, and it will last until you actually need it in an accident. Replace it after a crash. Replace it when the manufacturer says replace it (5 years is typical) because the inner lining can become less effective as it gets gently bashed by your head after several years of use. Last bit - make sure it fits well, and can't get dislodged easily. The best helmet in the world is wasted if it pops off your head 1/0th second after hitting the ground/vehicle. As I said MIPs is not part of any official certification process for cycling helmets it is a commercial IP and as cycling becomes more dangerous, mountain biking or more dangerous again downhill cycling helmets get superior strength and padding due to the greater risk. You can enhance your safety on the road by using a slightly bulkier mountain bike helmet typically although there is some variation in safety. The very lightweight cycling helmets might just scrape by the certification testing but others may more easily past such tests. It's all about taking a common sense realistic viewpoint. You go into cycling shops and often they will spout nonsense about high cost products in order to sell them. Some of the best value cycling helmets I've seen have been at Planet X, fully certified high quality helmets which have been 1/3rd the price of what more mainstream shops sell similar helmets. Most brands don't manufacture anything themselves they rely on factories in Asia, mostly mainland China and you get one or two large factories producing helmets for lots of the big bike brands like Cannondale, Specialized etc as well as more direct sellers like Planet X. I used to deal with some of these factories as I was a Compliance Officer for an importer and the same factories produced other products like safety helmets and other composite helmets that the company I worked for would import. Factory door price was around $2-4 for a lot of the cycling helmets but at retail the helmets could be sold for between £12-40 it seemed depending on the brand put on them and the logistics. All went through the same tests and were certified to the same standard. Ultimately its just a low cost product made of plastic and foam, there are no high value materials at all in them. As ever its always about what people are prepared to pay rather than what it costs to make. If someone will pay £60 why sell it at £15.
June 10, 20223 yr Wonder what's different about an ebike helmet, speed and consequences aren't really any different. From the Halfords website: Engineered with a thicker EPS* core that's able to absorb more energy in an accident. Meets the european NTA standard [NTA 8776 icon on website] for speed pedelecs The Standards intro page is missing, but this looks like a partial copy: https://kaliprotectives.com/blogs/journal/certification-for-ebike-helmets The actual standard (but no free download): https://www.nen.nl/en/nta-8776-2016-12-en-228006 [*EPS = Expanded or 'blown' polystyrene] Edited June 10, 20223 yr by richtea99
June 10, 20223 yr From the Halfords website: Engineered with a thicker EPS* core that's able to absorb more energy in an accident. Meets the european NTA standard [NTA 8776 icon on website] for speed pedelecs The Standards intro page is missing, but this looks like a partial copy: https://kaliprotectives.com/blogs/journal/certification-for-ebike-helmets The actual standard (but no free download): https://www.nen.nl/en/nta-8776-2016-12-en-228006 [*EPS = Expanded or 'blown' polystyrene] Interestingly that is actually a Dutch standard for speed pedelecs, ebikes that assist beyond 25km/h rather than a European wide certification standard. Also the Dutch famously have a low takeup of cycling helmets despite their low cycling accident rate which they put down to their superior cycling infrastructure. Seems like very good certification to have as it exceeds standard EN cycling standards. Looking at the helmet it looks perhaps somewhere around a mountain bike helmet in strength and thickness, perhaps a little bit more or a little bit less. Downhill helmets are typically somewhere between mountain bike and motor bike in protection. As protection goes up of course weight also goes up. Some of the downhill helmets are around a kilo in weight.
June 13, 20223 yr Cycle helmets fly traps are not impact safety devices, they may protect your bonce from a low flying branch or if one takes a low speed tumble but in any major collision they will be next to useless. If I where a helmet it is a young dudes ski/snowboard helmet but 99.5% of the time I wear a leather bush hat. My helmet has certainly saved me on more than one occasion, once when l crashed on a track and head butted a dry stone wall, and the other time l came off in a gully and went down sideways on to rocks. I wouldn't have liked the damage sustained to the helmet, to have been my head. Agree they are fly traps though!!
Join the conversation
You are posting as a guest. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.