SHARP lid tests and Arai...

[cyberface]

In a moment of mad 'I want to have some fun again' craziness I bought a bike today. It is well used, but a bit of a bargain and just what I fancied after a while off two wheels (passed my test 10 years ago) - a CBR600 F4, with the all important comfy pillion seat and grab rail for my girlfriend, who loves coming along (I tried to get her onto her own bike, she's done her CBT and theory test but the momentum to do all the tests stopped when she stacked it in her CBT, the bike fell on top of her and gave her a load of bruising. She jumped back on and passed the CBT eventually but got 'the fear' - funnily enough she has no fear when riding pillion).

I could do with some new kit, so I'm also looking at getting a new lid. I've always bought Arai helmets - when I got my first bike they were the only top brand that fitted perfectly, every Arai I've had has been a perfect, comfortable fit - and with the old cliché 'buy a £50 helmet if you've got a £50 head' in my mind, there's the reassurance of high price.

However I've just read these SHARP government lid tests and Arai don't fare very well. In fact for the full 5 stars it sounds like I ought to buy a Lazer LZ6 for £60.

WTF? I'm immediately suspicious of anything classed as 'government testing' or 'safety' because this government are a bunch of incompetent liars and I certainly wouldn't trust them with my road safety. Anyone know what the real deal is? If I hadn't come across the MCN page whilst searching for deals, I wouldn't know about these new tests and would be merrily buying another Arai tomorrow morning before picking up the new bike - now I'm confused as hell.

Assuming these cheaper brands fit me well, are these test figures worth basing a purchasing decision on? For reference, I normally choose a plain silver or white helmet, I'm not bothered about fancy paintwork, just visibility and quality. The tiger ears and tail can be added later, you see.

[cyberface]

Okey cokey, it's not clear whether the tests really do mean that Arai helmets fare poorly in certain types of accident, since if the government are keeping the actual formula used to convert the various quantitative measurements into a dumbed-down 'star' system secret, then AFAIAC it is worthless.

Arai lids fit my head particularly well and are very comfortable, so on the basis that good fit is more important than 'government arbitrary stars', I've just bought another Arai. Plain silver as they didn't have white, as I like people to be able to see me...

The comparison with the NCAP ratings is interesting though. Do NCAP publish their methodology and measurements transparently, so no car manufacturer can argue with the results? The way the helmet ratings have been put together smacks of inexperience, as the 'secret formula' allows each manufacturer to claim 'special circumstances' and we end up with *more* confusion than when we started.

Damn government, if only the figures and calculations were completely transparent.

[cyberface]

Fire99 said:

My concern with all this is that im not disputing Arai lids are very comfortable (well for my brother anyway as they dont fit me.. ) and i certainly agree buying the best lid you can afford as you only get one head.

I have no concern about paying 2 3 4 500 quid for a helmet as long as the money is actually paying for a safer 'lid' and not just a brand name..

What i want to know (and i've not got a difinitive answer yet) is, in a accident, is a £500 Arai or Shoei really going to protect my head better than a £150 AGV or HJC or other cheaper 'gold star' rated helmet?

I'm guessing that I should have put more thought into it rather than immediate knee-jerk 'because the government are s, the SHARP testing methodology is almost certainly nu-labour undergrad statistics and methodologically suspect'.

I like Arai because they fit and are very very comfortable. However the exact lid I wanted when I picked up my bike today (I've got a proper bike at last - woo hooo!!!! fk me they are fun) wasn't available so I got the next model down (all others had lairy graphics, and I wanted a plain light colour for visibility and safety). Now there's not a lot of difference in price between a £200 Arai and a £150 AGV or HJC, so there's a chance that the £50 is for the brand name, and the AGV and HJC lids actually do perform better in the SHARP tests - and that the tests are meaningful.

However the issue that made me take notice was how the £60 helmet got the full 5 stars whereas few of Arai's helmets did. Arai have been around a LONG time and are used by many racers, who presumably care about the protection their helmet affords (though I accept the argument that track crashes are often different to road crashes). £60 doesn't buy you a lot of top quality materials - and more importantly, unless there's huge volume sold, it doesn't seem to offer much in the way of reassurance that a large amount of R&D has been performed on the helmet.

If that one data point didn't exist (i.e. the 5 star £60 lid) then I'd probably have spend some time trying on the £150 AGV and HJC helmets to see if they fit my head as nicely as the Arais I've owned. When I first started biking 10 years ago I took the advice of my older, wiser work colleagues who had been biking for many years - buy an Arai or a Shoei. In the bike shop I tried examples of both, no Shoei fitted comfortably but all the Arais did, perfectly. So Arai it was and has remained.

However if they really are trading on reputation rather than solid fact performance, and the SHARP ratings are meaningfully accurate... perhaps I should try the mid-range priced other brands (I simply can't believe that a £60 helmet is made out of the best materials and has millions of pounds of R&D behind the design). When I need a new helmet, that is... since my nice new Arai is very comfortable

Interesting you'd have thought that a Japanese company, when faced with tests that show their position as pinnacle of engineering in a bad light, would immediately start working hard at fixing all the issues found by the testing. It's not quite so Japanese to simply and arrogantly state that their products are the best and the tests are obviously wrong. The Japanese concept of Kaizen (continuous improvement) would prohibit such retrograde steps - if anything, new data would be embraced to improve the products.

The only other possible explanation I can come up with at this time of night is that the SHARP testers omitted variables, that helmet manufacturers consider very important selling points, in the single-minded pursuit of impact resistance. So perhaps the £60 Lazer does, in fact, stand up to impacts better than my Arai... but the Lazer weighs 25 kg and that's why it's tough? Obviously weight is a big selling point - nobody wants a hugely heavy lid, and from a safety point of view, I don't want a helmet heavier than the ability of my neck muscles to cope with.

SHARP make a big deal about offset impacts that can cause rotation and potential spinal injury. I agree - that's a nightmare injury that nobody wants. But surely a heavier lid is more likely to overwhelm the neck muscles and damage the spine in a case of rotation than a lightweight lid? I didn't see any mention of helmet weight on their website. After all, you could probably achieve 5 stars easily enough by doubling the thickness of the shell and expanded polystyrene impact absorber... at the cost of a bulky and heavy helmet.

Food for thought, I guess. It's just for Arai to dismiss the results, when they could gain much more engineering credibility by saying that they will analyse the data and redesign the offending areas to massively surpass the 5 star rating, seems arrogant and a bit un-Japanese. Arai haven't rested on their laurels for years - the racetrack is a harsh test environment and Arai aren't exactly absent from top racers' heads.

Perhaps if Rossi rocks up to a race with a Lazer £60 lid with 'viva la figa' written over it in cheap permanent marker, I'll change my mind. But it's that one data point that brings the entire methodology into question IMO - unless all Lazer do is to reverse engineer the top brands' designs (thus eliminating any R&D cost) and rebuild them with cheaper materials but much thicker for a big safety margin. And I don't think they'd be that cynical.

[cyberface]

black-k1 said:

Mon Ami Mate said:

The SHARP test has been derived by the Government. It is designed to tick boxes and has nothing to do with the safety of bikers. Ignore it.

In what way are the tests not appropriate and what tests should be undertaken instead?

Regardless of the polarity of opinion in the two above posts... my main issue is simply why has the final weighting algorithm been kept secret?

That is the fundamental reason for my suspicion and my default return to Arai. If the data was published, the algorithm was published, then I could make a scientific judgement based on the data and all would be good. Instead there's a 'dumbed-down' star rating that could have no valid relationship to the data collected (e.g. one star deducted for double-ring strap adjuster, for example) - in the government's words 'easy to understand' generally means 'dumbed-down'...