snell helmets lacking sun shield | GTAMotorcycle.com

snell helmets lacking sun shield

bigpoppa

bigpoppa

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Just a coincidence or by design that every snell certified helmet iv looked at is lacking the dropdown sun shield?

Must be a safety compromise somehow..
 
Snell is a racing standard
will never find one with the drop down sun shade

and some debate about Snell helmets for average street riders
if you come off the bike @ 150 kmh, they are great

most street riders crash much slower than that
and the Snell helmet being so hard, can contribute to brain injury
that otherwise could be lessened but just a DOT helmet

personally, I prefer the ECE standard
more stringent than DOT, but better for everyday riding than Snell
 
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bigpoppa said:
Just a coincidence or by design that every snell certified helmet iv looked at is lacking the dropdown sun shield?

Must be a safety compromise somehow..
Click to expand...
That shield has to go somewhere. Without it, you have a shell fully contacting foam, fully contacting padding, then your head. By necessity, there needs to be a cavity in that stackup for the sunshield. Probably could keep equal protection if you increased the shell size so you kept the same thickness of foam and padding. No idea if they do that or not.
 
Up till the end of last year, FIM (the organization running MotoGP and WSBK, among other racing series) accepted all ECE 22.05 Type P (full face), Snell M 2015 and JIS T8133 2015 Type 2 (full face) helmets.

FIM recently created their own standard for helmet homologation, with testing done by their own lab. 2020 was the first year for this new standard, which is called FIM Racing Homologation Programme. Certified helmets come with a QR code that is sewn into one of the helmet straps that officials can quickly scan in during pre-race:

qr.jpg

These are the brands and models that have passed FIM testing:

Homologated Helmets | FRHP

The FIM Racing Homologation Programme was established in order to grant special recognition to products related to safety and as a requirement for FIM competitions.
www.frhp.org www.frhp.org

Helmets must already be Snell, JIS or ECE certified before being submitted to the FIM for homologation. From what I gather, additional FIM testing is not focused on increased velocity of impact, but instead number of impacts, as racers tend to roll and hit the ground many times before coming to a stop.

This leads me to believe that additional FIM Homologation certification might be well above what most street riders require.

Interestingly, some manufacturers only submit a subset of their helmet sizes. Shoei X-Fourteens are only FIM homologated for XS, S, M. Seems none of their sponsored riders have big heads? Obviously if Lorenzo wore a Shoei, they'd have to certify an XXXXXL....
 
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bigpoppa said:
Just a coincidence or by design that every snell certified helmet iv looked at is lacking the dropdown sun shield?

Must be a safety compromise somehow..
Click to expand...

Correct. An article posted on the Snell website states:

Helmets with built-in flip down sun visors have not been submitted by manufacturers to be tested. Manufactures (sic) are currently reducing the thickness of the foam in the brow area so the visor fits in the helmet when the visor is in the retracted/stowed position. Unfortunately, this reduction compromises the ability for the helmet to manage energy and results in inferior protection for the rider
Click to expand...
 
That's Snell's opinion, obviously. I know of no evidence indicating that ECE 2205 helmets provide inferior real-world protection to the rider.
 
Brian P said:
That's Snell's opinion, obviously. I know of no evidence indicating that ECE 2205 helmets provide inferior real-world protection to the rider.
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Snell died in 1956 he doesn't have an opinion and The Snell Foundation Inc. isn't in the opinion business, it's a not-for-profit organization dedicated to research, education, testing and development of helmet safety standards. Snell Foundation is a collection of medical doctors, scientists and professionals with very impressive credentials. Snell helmets certification - People
 
Statement from Snell's website ... "Unfortunately, this reduction compromises the ability for the helmet to manage energy and results in inferior protection for the rider" ... is effectively an opinion that their standard is more effective than ECE. That's not a universal opinion ...


FIM required (up to this year) ECE ... not Snell. They now have their own standard. Lightcycle's post above addresses this.
 
:unsure: Did Snell Laboratories test the helmets with the flip-up visors or not?
If they tested flip-visor helmets and discovered them to all be lacking in the protection they require to give approval,
that is a lot different then holding an opinion based on the observation that the construction is different and then saying, no we are not going to test or approve that helmet.
 
Manufacturers didn't submit them for approval.

Just because it doesn't pass some technical requirement that Snell has, doesn't mean that technical requirement is meaningful in the real world.
 
nervously looks at nearby Icon Airflite
 
They said: "Unfortunately, this reduction compromises the ability for the helmet to manage energy and results in inferior protection for the rider"
:unsure: That sure does seem like they tested at at least one flip-visor helmet that somebody submitted and not just assumption.
 
I haven't looked at this closely since way back when Motorcyclist magazine published that story disputing the priority Snell placed on specific scenarios (piercing, multiple hits in the same place, etc.) and suggested some cheap DOT helmets were safer in more common crash scenarios. I know Snell has updated their standards, but I don't know if they've changed those priorities.

I like the British SHARP website, as it goes beyond a simple pass/fail model. It's funded by the UK DfT, and is designed to augment the ECE certification with more comprehensive impact testing. Interestingly, they comment in their FAQ section about multiple impacts and penetration testing specifically, essentially saying they don't believe either is a significant enough risk to be worth testing. Here's the website:

SHARP - THE HELMET SAFETY SCHEME

It's important to note that some of the big brands (Shoei, Arai, etc.) sell different models in Europe because Snell isn't a recognized standard there. Historically these have been lighter for the reasons mentioned above, so some North American models may not have the same results.

Interestingly, the sun visor models get marked down more for side impact than frontal impact, according to a quick search there. My Shark Spartan Carbon (fantastic helmet, by the way, super quiet) gets four stars, but only gets a middling rating for side impacts. Five star models with a drop-down visor include the Arai QV Pro (Signet X?), Caberg V2 407, HJC C70, FG ST and IS-17, and X-Lite X702. None of these did any better than one mark down from top on side impact, but the only helmets I've seen that are all green are the top-spec race replicas...
 
I remembered the existence of that study but forgot where I saw it and thus couldn't find it. IIRC the Snell 2010 standard contained changes that kindasortamaybe acknowledge that they had been focusing on inappropriate impact scenarios without actually admitting that the 2005 standard was flawed. If memory is correct, the Snell requirement for protection against multiple impacts in the same spot on the helmet was forcing manufacturers to use stiffer impact material that transmitted more G-loading to the head inside. The ECE single-impact test (single impact in the same spot) allowed lower G-loading in that single impact.

That was when I switched to ECE helmets and never looked back.
 
Priller said:
Five star models with a drop-down visor include the Arai QV Pro (Signet X?)...
Click to expand...

No Arai helmet has an internal drop down visor. The QV Pro (Signet X here in North America) and other models may be equipped with the Arai Pro Shade System, an external flip up lens which fits over the main visor.
 
Jayell said:
No Arai helmet has an internal drop down visor. The QV Pro (Signet X here in North America) and other models may be equipped with the Arai Pro Shade System, an external flip up lens which fits over the main visor.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. The SHARP website listed it as having a 'drop down sun visor', but didn't differentiate between internal or external.

Either way, it rates no better than any of the HJC models, which do have internal visors and manage to weigh less. The fact that they also cost a third of the Arai tells me where I'd be shopping were I looking for a sunvisor-equipped helmet...
 
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