I dropped my friends helmet from about 24" inches off the ground onto the street. There minimal chip in the helmet from it. He told me it is garbage and need to buy a new one. I understand if you are in a crash and it is cracked or beat up, but is this neccessary to replace? Thanks.

 

It depends. Send it back to the manufacturer, and they can do a test on it to see if it's still road worthy. What brand helmet it is?

 

2 feet isn't going to do much to the helmet.

 

If it does, it's not much of a helmet then.

 

THe only way yo find outis to have it x-rayed. It could have caused enough stress in the outer shell to affect the way the helmet will react in a real crash. Especially if the location of impact is the same.

If it's Shoei or Arai, I belive it's a free service for 5 years, you cna send it to them (at your cost) and they will ship it back after the check it for free (at their cost I think).

Good luck.

 

well from what i understand if it is an old helmet you are supposed to replace helmets every three years.

 

the helmet is only a few months old i believe.... and it was $480 so i cant imagine it was a cheap one.....

 

The way I was explained about this helmet dropping issue was that the outer shells of helmets are just multiple layers of thin plastic which have a very small spacing between them. When you drop it at "such and such" height then those plastic layers will compress like they are supposed to in a crash case and there will be no gap between the layers. Without this gap it is possible for the impact to crack the plastic which could cause an unsafe lip and catch. The main reason for the outer shell is to allow your head to slide without any stress on it, so if there is a crack that could catch and turn nasty.

So basically if the layers are compressed then the helmet could crack and that could be bad. From what I heard Ohlias is correct in saying you can send them back to have the helmet tested out. Most of the time due to safety regulations they will just come back stating they are unsafe because you could imagine the lawsuit if they send a helmet that has been dropped back and it turns out unsafe.

I was explained this by the MSF course teachers and I would agree with it because it is logical. Sorry dude but it looks like you might need to be buying him a new helmet. I wish I could tell you otherwise.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by NidStyles &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">If it does, it's not much of a helmet then. </TD></TR></TABLE> i agree