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This month’s Motorcyclist Magazine had a follow-up article to the original in which they took on the Snell standard IMO. I originally blogged about it here, and an interesting debate took place. While there is no point in rehashing that info, two camps have been formed: Those who believe that a flat surface impact is best (DOT, ECE, etc.), and those who believe that double anvil is best (Snell).

As someone on the outside, what I read in the original article looked like there was bad blood from a previous engagement. I read it as a less than professional presentation (or at least it could have been more professional, since the Snell directed shots were not necessary to further prove the data) of their findings with respect to Snell. On th flipside, Snell’s response was more of the same. Have I mentioned hat it appears to be something from the past (read: pissing contest). Heh – it was like an election where you fling some mud, the opponent respond with a fling back at you, then you complain about mud-flinging.

Anyway, this month’s article closes the loop finally. I really couldn’t figure out what bothered me about the original article until I read this follow-up one. They did not include a solution. Whether it was omitted purposely or not doesn’t matter. Motorcyclist Magazine walked the fine line between being in the know and being a reporting body with “MC and other industry experts think that…”. If you make that claim, you or your ‘other industry experts’ better have a recommendation or a solution.

This month they published it. The article is now complete. Had they included this piece in the original, I think it would have been much less about Snell and more about the solution.

They reference a few things that seem to make a lot of sense in what MC calls The Motorcyclist Standard. NOTE: I rest my case on claiming to be in the know. They are advocating an extremely hard shell with a soft liner. The hard shell protects for the hard hits by dispersing the energy, and the soft liner reduces the G’s in softer, more common impacts.

In general they want the COST 327 standard for impacts with less allowable G’s. They take it a step further though and call for a chin bar spec that mandates a maximum allowable G-force for a given impact.

These helmets exist already in the form of FIA (Formula 1) Super Helmets. Bell sells one for about $6500, Arai doesn’t sell their $10k version to the public, and Schuberth says theirs would be about $18k. But hey, when you drive a $million$ dollar car, whats $10 for a lid.

Finally, they go into some new liner technology that would drastically soften the blow from an impact. No too much info is available as of the moment in regard to how far away these materials are. But the collapsible nature and better venting have (hinted in the article) HJC looking at it pretty seriously.

ps - if you want to know the specifics…go get this month’s magazine!