Helmets

[litch]

I've started fishing through the available materiel on helmets, I was hoping someone has come up with something I've been wanting for a while but I can't find it. I used to ride three wheelers as a kid so I've spent a lot of time in them and not approaching this from a completely theoretical point of view. It seems that in the last decade the biggest advancement in helmets is the leap from fiberglass to kevlar on the highend buckets. whoop.

I want a helmet that augments my senses. At a very minimum they should have headlights on them but there's so much more your could do. You can buy helmet speakers but why the hell hasn't anyone ever put a pair of microphones on the out side of one? It seems like something you might want to be able to route in to your speakers and maybe even set to override your mp3s. Yeah you can get a camera for a helmet but not a helmet with a built in camera and lets just forget such obviously cool shit like mini-huds.

C'mon, what the fuck?

Comments

[luxcanon.livejournal.com]

[pi3832.livejournal.com]

You want your helmet to be light and aerodynamic. Anything that is going to significantly add to weight or drag is a problem.

As for lights--there's no way you'd get that past the DOT. It'd be way to easy to blind oncoming drivers.

As for mics--essentially everyone I ride with wears earplugs while riding. The amount of windnoise at highway speeds is deafening. You actually can hear the world around you better with earplugs in.

Besides what are you trying to hear, anyway? The cell-phone conversation that soccer-mom is having in the mini-van blocking you?

Get a cheap helmet to start. (At least 3/4, preferably full-faced.) Ride for a year and find out what matters to you, then up-grade appropriately.

[litch.livejournal.com]

there's no way you'd get that past the DOT. It'd be way to easy to blind oncoming drivers.

You can buy lights you can strap around the outside of a helmet, they're just heavier and less aerodynamic but then the DOT has demonstated patent stupidity on a number of cases.

Wind noise would definately make it more difficult to engineer but it should be doable, and of course I'd put a good noise cancelation filter in it.

what are you trying to hear, anyway

the car next to me, the ambulance coming up from the side. the stuff I am not immediately looking at

[pi3832.livejournal.com]

You should always be riding slightly faster than the traffic around you, so noises behind you don't matter that much.

As for sirens, you can hear them a hell of a lot better than the yuppie in the Lexus with his stereo on. Even when you have earplugs in.

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Trying hooking up with the SMOT guys if you want to talk to some other riders in the area who do it right. Tell 'em you know a guy on the main SabMag e-mail list.