HELMETS - To wear or not to wear?
| Poll: How many of you wear a helmet? Total Votes: 28 |
|
|---|---|
| Yes, I do! | 26  |
| No, I don’t.... | 1 |
| Every now and then... | 1 |
Prefer the inmould construction myself. Lighter, lower profile (like the Smith Maze) and offers good protection. Would never touch a helmet that is not certified to any standard. I’ll post up a picture of my completely shattered Giro Fuse helmet when I got knocked out from a bad jump at Niseko. Really took the force of the impact and probably saved my life. A hardhat probably would have made it worse.
im getting one this season :D
I was thinking of getting a new one, maybe a Giro or a Sandbox helmet in a size that fits. We will see once I get to Rhythm in Cooma and want to buy something hahahah!
I’ve got a sandbox brain bucket.. tried on a few other ones when I was buying it but just didn’t fit as well as the brain bucket did. Have heard a few things about the brims not being great for a head on situation with all the force of the impact being centred on your forehead but haven’t experienced it myself despite a few front on hits (one decent whack into a tree which put a few tiny chips into the brim and a big face first stack onto dave murray downhill which is probably the most hard packed surface you’ll come across). Same token though the brim did save my lenses from smashing into said tree and with the I/O’s not having a frame that extends past the lense.
Wow guys thanks for the messages. wasnt expecting so much.
Another point id like to add is that manufacturers of helmets say that once you take a bad stack and hit your head (with a helmet on), the integrity of that helmet is ruined and it should be replaced….
I personally havent, and wouldnt replace my helmet, unless it visibly cracked.
Whats your stance on this????
I should probably look into one, I am sporting a black eye and a sprained shoulder as I sit here typing this courtesy of a face and shoulder impact with some ice. Actually not sure a helmet would have helped much as I think it was the goggle plastic that caused it.
And funny you have said this, because i used to ski. and id ski without a helmet back then.
But one time i went around a corner too fast on ice, slipped and my ski tips went under a wooden fence and my face went straight into the fence. If i wasnt wearing googles, my nose wouldve been broken, they broke instead.
Strap it on be smart and besides its just another great spot for your new board world sticker!
Hahahaa! thats the way! 
well, it seems that most people on here wear helmets. What is your stance on a certified helmet vs hard hats (bern/ sandbox brain bucket).
hard hats just protect your head from hard object but do not absorb the impact. certified helmets have styrofoam that cracks on impact lessening the blow to your head. I think right now that there’s a lot of kids buying for example the brain bucket thinking they’re a proper helmet
Yeah, i heard of these maybe 2 years back and nothing since actually. i really liked the sound of them then wen i saw it on aus tv. But reading your short comment, i think ill keep to a helmet hey.
Danny.
Having just finished the NH winter over here in Canada (and being MIA from here for most of that time…too much time on the hill and not enough on here methinks 
) I can safely say that without wearing a helmet I wouldn’t be here today. During the season I was badly concussed not once but twice even while wearing my helmet, and couldn’t count the number of times I bailed badly enough for it to come in to play. I also managed to hit the back of my helmet with my board through a nice faceplant/scorpion combo, and as you can probably imagine, without my helmet the damage would have been a little more serious…
The culture over here (at least at the Canadian resorts I frequented) was definitely pro-helmet, and it seems to be shifting towards that at home which is great (I think the response to this thread speaks for itself). If you take the time to try a wide variety of helmets and find one that fits and feels comfortable, you hardly notice it’s there, and you are just taking one big thing out of the equation that could ruin your day/week/season/life in a split second bail…
For the record I wear a RED Mutiny, the little peak sits just out over the goggles and has actually saved them numerous times…fits with a lot lower profile than the other RED helmets I tried when buying it, wore it every day of the season and wasn’t uncomfortable once…
Anyway rant over, this is my first post for a while so I’d better stop, hope all those at home are pumped and ready for the season :D
Wow thanks for your input
How about everyone take a phto of their helmet and upload them?? ill edit the original post also..
Heres mine: Its a ProTec, ‘Classic Snow’. I got it in Japan while i was over there. It was actually quite wierd, everything over there was expensive because of the exchange rate, but these helmets were a little bit cheaper than what they’d cost here. Really shows that Japan has good value helmets, because they value having helmets on as many people that can afford them easily!
Its a good one, so comfortable and the soft bits over the ears are removable for on hotter days. its served me well.
Prefer the inmould construction myself. Lighter, lower profile (like the Smith Maze) and offers good protection. Would never touch a helmet that is not certified to any standard. I’ll post up a picture of my completely shattered Giro Fuse helmet when I got knocked out from a bad jump at Niseko. Really took the force of the impact and probably saved my life. A hardhat probably would have made it worse.
Oh hey would love to see the picture of that helmet mate! im actually quite interested :)
Prefer the inmould construction myself. Lighter, lower profile (like the Smith Maze) and offers good protection. Would never touch a helmet that is not certified to any standard. I’ll post up a picture of my completely shattered Giro Fuse helmet when I got knocked out from a bad jump at Niseko. Really took the force of the impact and probably saved my life. A hardhat probably would have made it worse.
Well heres a story for you. I wear what you are calling a hardhat riding a bicycle in the city all the time. I also wear a similiar construction helmet in the snow. These helmets are what is termed multi impact and i believe they offer as good protection as the expanded foam single impact you speak of.
So back to the story.
Running late for Uni one afternoon I jumped on my pushbike in a hurry as I took off I got collected by a hyundai pretty much head on! I got thrown onto the bonnet with my bike and smashed the windscreen with my face and shoulder! Landed on my feet in the gutter and started bleeding profusely from the cuts in my face. After a trip to hospital for stiches and a few days to get over the concussion I was back to normal. The protec skate helmet I was wearing saved my life. It had a gash in the front but I looked at that as a trophy. (punk rock yeah) The car had hit me hard enough to bend the shock forks and pop the weld on the head tube on my mountain bike. When I eventually got a pushbike together again I continued to wear this same helmet! A few months later I was riding home along a busy street after work when I was clipped from behind by a porsche sending me over the handlebars and face first into the bitumen. I was knocked unconscious and the cut above my right eye created a pool of blood which I lay in waiting for the ambulance. Save number two. After this I continued wearing the helmet for a little while. When I finally got the bike fixed I bought a new helmet. same style same brand same colour.
I think that multi impact helmets are much better for the sport of snowboarding and this is why:
A single impact helmet can have a weak spot from a minor fall which the wearer might not pick up thinking that the accident was low on the scales of these things. It can lose integrity without the wearer being aware of this and effectively not work properly when needed to. As snowboarding has the potential for many small impacts this makes more sense iMO. The other reason is that in the event of an impact being great enough to cause any sort of real damage whether you are wearing a helmet that is rated or not is not an issue, see kevin Pearce!
I guess I disagree with the idea that “A hardhat probably would have made it worse”
not sure what you mean by multi-impact but the difference comes down to having something hard against your head or something soft, that absorbs the impact. At high speeds your brain will bang around inside your skull so you will die either way.
mm good points Andy. I don’t have much experience with hardhats so I guess my call was ill informed. But then Sandbox has a label and warnings about not being certified I shyed away from hardhats. In terms of what I’d want to wear to protect my head from an impact, I’d still go with a certified helmet rather then a fashionable hardhat with not much testing behind it.
My helmet is on me at all times.
When working as an instructor, or riding the mountain in a company jacket, I think it is important to have an image of safe snowboarding. I think it helps with the older people out there also that look down on snowboarders. when I wear a helmet and they dont - who’s the more dangerous one? eh?
lol
It has saved my head a couple of times. and I’d hate to think of hitting a tree without a helmet!
not sure what you mean by multi-impact
Multi Impact is the term/spin used to refer to Skateboard style helmets which have a softer foam in them and are not designed to break on impact. The foam acts like a cushion and can therefore absorb multiple impacts.
Wow guys thanks for the messages. wasnt expecting so much.
To wear or not is always a good topic of conversation
I know in Nth America wearing a helmet is pretty commonplace - of course there will always be those people who will never wear one which is their call…...no idea idea why - its not hard to put something on your head and click it into place.
Another point id like to add is that manufacturers of helmets say that once you take a bad stack and hit your head (with a helmet on), the integrity of that helmet is ruined and it should be replaced….
I personally havent, and wouldnt replace my helmet, unless it visibly cracked.
Whats your stance on this????
I guess it depends on your definition of a “bad stack” - Cycling helmets are the same. I cracked my bike cycling helmet and got it replaced immediately. I could see the hairline fracture within the helmet and thought “geez that could have been my skull!”.
If I did have nasty spill whilst snowboarding and it was visibly cracked, I would definately replace it
If I did have nasty spill whilst snowboarding and it was not visibly cracked, I would still very likely replace it - just because you cannot see any visible damage, the internal foam/protection of the helmet may be compromised. The contents and health of my head is priceless, so I would have no problem forking out the $$$ getting another one.
there are two items of snowboard gear I am prepared to pay full price on…
1. snowboard boots
2. snowboard helmet
happy to buy the the other stuff online or when its on sale
Not sure if this applies to snowboarding helmets, but with cycling helmets, I have read that it is recommended you replace them every 2-3 years even if they are not broken. This is because your sweat, the sun, etc can eventually weaken the integrity of the helmet. Not sure if thats true but we have 2 bike helmets and rotate their usage.
I have a Giro Fuse helmet from 2006 so potentially it could be time for a replacement - its served me well and has def. saved me from concussion or worse. There def. a few scratches on it from it smashing into tree branches when riding through some tight-ish areas
yeah well ill probably look into buying another one at the end of this season or next.. havent actually had a really bad hit in my own one.. come to think about it they were hire ones :/
yea lol boots are a very good point. i have salomon FDB’s which i bought maybe 3 yrs ago. ill tell you, they werent cheap, at first i thort id made a bad choice in them because my left ankle would get extremely sore and cramp up.. but luckily i figured that if my heel is pressed to the back when i do up, its comfortable. and very comfortable