But it's a tradeoff. Full-faced helmets give the helmet another point of leverage on which to break your neck. On the other hand they won't erase your face, which is nice.
Motorcycle helmets are just not ever to be worn while biking. They are designed for vastly different forces at vastly different speeds than a bike helmet.
Not to mention that they will breathe very very very poorly, though I'm a little unsure how these wavecell helmets will breathe. Like the Scott helmets, lots of tiny holes seems like not as good as big holes for airflow.
That seems like a bad take to me. There is a lot of overlap between motorcycle sports events speeds and bicycle event speeds. A bicycle downhill racer will be going a lot faster than a motorcycle enduro rider. That is why, as an example, Bell helmets marketed to enduro riders and downhillers are the same helmet.
This is incorrect. Most cyclists rarely sustain speeds beyond 20mph and will not regularly see speeds beyond 30-35mph. If going downhill on a road bike, amateur cyclists hit mid 40s occasionally on weekend rides. For reference the maximum speed I have ever seen (I have biked >1,100 miles this year) is 55.7mph for one brief moment.
Motorcycles on the other hand consistently travel at 30+mph and regularly see sustained 55-80mph on the highway. It's not the same problem at all.
If your helmet is likely to encounter a 60mph impact you will design for that. Most likely that means your helmet will be stronger, which means it won't break away as easily at lower speeds. This means when your head will take more of the kinetic energy in a 15mph crash than it otherwise would. Not to mention that the helmet will be heavier, which means there's more momentum on impact which may affect the way forces get dissipated.
If you compare with downhill mountain biking that's a very tiny segment of the population. It's true that some downhill mountain bikers may use motocross helmets. That's not what the average bike helmet is for, and it's not what the average bike rider should be using.
I don't know why you keep arguing this. You said that motorcycle helmets are "never" to be worn by bicyclists. I point out that there is not just one but -several- different companies cross-marketing DOT-approved motorcycle helmets for bicycle sports. Now you are talking about the "average" bike rider. I think you just have a narrow, inaccurate conception of the universe of all cycle sports and you've probably never been anywhere near a motorcycle. Look at these BMX kids, then look at the motocross kids.
I have in fact ridden motorcycles, you’re still arguing a niche case. Fine, there exists some cyclist who wears a motorcycle helmet. It’s a bad idea for the vast majority of cyclists.
> and of course you can always just wear a motorcycle helmet.
That'd be a miserable experience, motorcycle helmets aren't significantly vented and in my experience have substantial sweat-absorbing padding. They prioritize minimizing wind noise and expect much higher speeds than most bicycles encounter...
I wear a full-face MIPS cycling helmet by Bell [0], it's a mountain biking helmet.
And I agree, the lack of face/chin protection is absurd in bicycle helmets. I know personally of two folks who injured their jaw or teeth in bicycle crashes wearing minimal helmets. I'm not even a particularly social person with lots of friends let alone ones who ride.
One needed an implant to replace a cracked tooth that had barely touched the pavement in a crash that also tore his chin up enough to need stitches. The other broke his jaw and was eating cheeseburgers through a straw for months while it was wired shut.
Both bad outcomes would have been trivially prevented by a full-face helmet.
I haven't found a down side to riding w/full-face, the modern ones are light enough and it's sufficiently ventilated to not be a heat issue.
Full face helmets do exist for bikes, for downhillers. There's big downsides in weight, cost, and less airflow (they are hot). But for downhill folks, especially those that race it's worth it. For pretty much close to 100% of non-downhill bikers, it's not.
The chin is not a particularly common injury for bicyclist.
While the direction of the responses went to "full face" bmx/motorcycle helmets, I was thinking more of a chin strap/protector like football helmets sometimes have:
They make BMX helmets that protect your chin. They're basically just dirt bike helmets. Nobody wears them probably for aesthetic and convenience reasons (unless they're Mountain biking).
They make dirt bike helmets if you need that kind of protection. If you're road biking and just want a bit more, you could always wear a bike helmet and a mouth piece. I've found the real danger of having your chin hit something is when it slams your mouth closed.
In my many years of riding I've fallen on the back of my head zero times and on my chin twice, as a kid.