by Bert Meinders

Created on: August 10, 2011

A few months ago I was out and about on my bike when I was passed by a man riding a large Harley-Davidson (that is to say, not a Sportster). I can't say exactly which model it was; they identify them these days with more letters than are found in a Polynesian alphabet, but his helmet caught my attention. It was black, very skimpy, and on it was printed "I am not wearing this helmet through choice". I wouldn't wear a helmet like that through choice either. It looked silly, and gave little if any real protection.

I may be getting soft with advancing age (I'm now an expert at being 33, with a quarter of a century's practice behind me), but I still use a motorcycle as my only transport. To do this in most developed countries, a helmet is as necessary as a licence, and for good reason. So, since I have to wear a helmet, it might as well be a good one. Because I wear glasses, a full face helmet is a little inconvenient since I have to remove my glasses to put it on or to take it off. I have an open face helmet, which I sometimes use in Summer, but not on long rides because the wind gets under it and plays with it, and it's tiring and distracting to keep resisting the pull on the strap. Since I ride a BMW it's appropriate that I wear a flip front helmet, a type pioneered by BMW, although, in my case it's not made by them. The only fault with this particular helmet is the visor attachment method. It was easy to remove the visor for cleaning, but it usually took between thirty minutes and an hour to put it back on, and once it was fitted I couldn't figure out how I'd done it. This was frustrating, because I hate not being able to figure out how another engineer did something. It took me just three minutes to fit the new visor yesterday; I finally figured it out. Worth noting: a buffing wheel will clean up small scuffs and scratches, but if you've carelessly allowed your new helmet to fall visor down on to coarse New Zealand Standard tarseal, you might as well not bother buffing. Scratches that deep are there to stay. My head was inside mine when it met the road. 

I bought my present helmet four years ago, to replace a full face helmet which I bought with my Yamaha XS650 (remember them?) in 1981 because it had the novelty of click-stop incremental opening and wouldn't arbitrarily close itself at 60km/h regardless of how tight I had the screws. Regular waxing, careful handling and occasional

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