General Full Face Helmets – Could there be a gap in the market?

I have a Specialized Deviant II. It’s ideal. Lightish and very well vented. I can happily climb up Inners wearing it without boiling my face.

I would also like to see helmets that without having a full chinbar came down below your ears and onto your cheekbones that would be a good compromise I believe.

Damn beaten by eliott. I think the OP will find the helmet his looking for already existed. The Giro switchblade. Better than a parachute and much lighter than a proper full face.

Here’s an old full facer of mine. I’d say it was still useable. Didn’t crack, just some slight gouges and scratches from a 25mph+ full stop faceplant on my right jaw. It’s the cheapy Trax Chrome Dome that Halfords used to sell. I bought it two weeks before I crashed, was wearing a pisspot before that and realised I was needing something better sooner rather than later.

I kind of expected it to crumple or do something to help slow the impact, but it didn’t.

Thats because bicycle FF helmets are not tested in the chinbar and have no poly in the chinbar to absorb / dissipate the impact

Given the chin bar sits away from the face, would there be much point in it absorbing impacts and thus probably collapsing?

I should hope the chinbar stays in one piece! I was assuming higher up behind the cheek area the helmet would choose to part, slowing the impact. The helmet was just so rigid that although saving my jaw and face from being ripped off, there was nothing to slow my brain from its hammer strike on the ridged inside of the forehead area of the skull.

It seem Urge is actually thinking the same thought too.

Already been done, and even with a TLD badge nobody bought them.

Although that is the shape of helmet I would like to see I would like to see it constructed like a standard XC helmet ie with loads of vents and not with a rigid shell like a motorcycle helmet so it remains light and cool to wear.

Mr Destructo – thats the disadvantage with that sort of helmet. The chinbar is not included in the testing and with the poly your brain gets a similar level of shock loading to that it would without.

some energy will be absorbed by the chinbar flexing but not as much as by poly crushing

I have been thinking about one of these, seems to address most of the points discussed
Urge Archi-enduro

Having a chinbar for anything other than Extreme freeride/DH does limit you in design with regards to weight and venting, I’m not sure if they’ll ever come up with a viable solution. Of all the crashes I’ve experienced, I’ve only had one major faceplant on the lower face and that was because of high speed and hitting the ground where a transition levelled out. I think if I hadn’t been wearing a full facer, and instead the pisspot I replaced two weeks before, I’d have put my arms across my face. As it was I placed too much confidence in the full facer and as I was flying at the ground I accepted I was likely to die and just relaxed my body and closed my eyes. Who knows if putting my arms up as a cushion would have helped, or if I’d have been carted off with two broken limbs.

The majority of my normal crashes have been where my bike stopped dead leaving me to land on knee, hip or shoulder, with the only head strikes being side strikes where I feel my helmet came out too far, or rear strikes (unavoidable)

I’ve always tried to get slim fitting helmets to avoid those side strikes, which really feeds into the argument where some people choose not to where a helmet on the road because of increased risk of head strikes from wearing something so bulky. I’ve personally had a road accident whilst not wearing a helmet, land ed on hip and elbow (chipping bones) but didn’t strike my head luckily and I always thought it was because my small head didn’t have a bulky helmet on it. This leads me to always fret over new helmet purchases. I actually normally wear a Met Crackerjack for road and XC usage (yeah, kids design!) which is really narrow, but it’s not vented enough.

I’m about to buy a new combi helmet and it’s got to be a Fox Transition I think. There’s loads of people, male and female, wearing pisspots for commuting round here so I won’t look out of place and I guess the venting can’t be ‘that’ much worse than my Met for longer rides, but we’ll see. If it’s A to B on Sustrans routes in the heat of summer I’ll just strap the helmet to my rucksack and put it back on at road sections. I simply can’t find an adult decent vented MTB helmet to fit me, so this is my route.