Which helmet and are lights allowed on helmet

[Samb]

Hi I am thinking of getting a new helmet the places I ride will be mixed probably more road and some slight off road too. The layout is rather hilly then rather flat too I will be going over 30mph on the hills. I was also wondering are lights legal on helmets? I was thinking of a smart helmet with lights but also a full face helmet for the extra protection. What helmet and style would be safe and legal for mixed terrain and mixed speeds. Thanks sam

[Jdsk]

There's quite a lot on this in the archives, including the regulations.

As a general approach:

• Make sure that the lights on the bike are compliant.

• Think of any lights on your head or helmet as being additional to those.

• Consider separately lights that are to show your position to others and lights that are to illuminate the road.

• Please don't dazzle anyone. Modern lights can be very very bright.

Jonathan

[drossall]

All fair points from Jonathan. The unwritten background being that, strictly, the law requires lights on the bike, not the rider. Therefore no helmet light will meet a strict reading of the law. Also, since you tend to turn your head when riding, no helmet light will point invariably in any particular direction (such as forward or backward).

Hence you should regard helmet lights as supporting your main lights. Apart from that, what he said.

[cycle tramp]

All fair points from Jonathan. The unwritten background being that, strictly, the law requires lights on the bike, not the rider. Therefore no helmet light will meet a strict reading of the law. Also, since you tend to turn your head when riding, no helmet light will point invariably in any particular direction (such as forward or backward).

On the road... 'marker' helmet lights are might be legal, but not the ones which produce enough light to ride with. Under UK law any additional lighting to the prescribed, should 'not dazzle' other road users.. I can't think of a single helmet mounted light which is capable of producing enough light to ride with which won't or doesn't have the capability not to dazzle.

[cycle tramp]

I was thinking of a smart helmet with lights but also a full face helmet for the extra protection. What helmet and style would be safe and legal for mixed terrain and mixed speeds. Thanks sam

Whilst full face helmets *may* reduce facial injuries, the fact that these helmets cause the head to have a large circumference, might in certain collisions produce additional stress on the neck resulting in greater injuries. Google 'full face vs open face helmets'.

[gaz]

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[tim-b]

Helmet weight has a surprising effect on tiredness on a longer ride and a light on top only makes that worse, apart from the potential hazards as suggested above.
For your type of riding I wear a conventional road helmet, around 220g in small size, and use bike-mounted lights

[PH]

I have a Bontrager system, Circuit helmet, Blendr brackets, ion 200 lights and wireless switch. The helmet fit suits me, the lights are easy to attach and remove, the switch on the handlebar is useful, the lights themselves are decent be seen lights and add a bit of visibility to the surroundings, but are not really powerful enough to be a main riding light. I also have a more powerful front light (ion Pro RT) that fits the same bracket, but as noted above the weight of that becomes noticeable for anything more than a few miles. The lights can also be paired with some Garmin models, though that isn't something I've tried.
There are some circumstances where having the main light point where you're looking would be a huge advantage. Though IMO that would be twisty single tack, or where there's a likelihood of overhanging branches, rather than most road and light off road scenarios. In most conditions having the light pointing in the directions of the bars is adequate. And looking for a light to match your speed is the wrong way round, even in the Ever Ready days you could match your speed to the light. OTOH I find supplementary lights on the helmet very useful, road signs, punctures, map reading and the idea that you're more visible*. Plus in the event of a main light failure I have some sort of back-up. I also do deliveries which is why I went looking for a helmet light - there ought to be a law requiring people expecting things to be delivered to their home after dark to display the house number...

* I only have anecdote rather than data to support that idea, it's not one I'm going to either argue or be dissuaded from.

[geocycle]

I have stuck with specialized helmets for a couple of decades. The local bike shop stocks them and the fit was fine. They also are quite light which as mentioned up thread is important. My latest come with MIPS as well as some accident sensor ANGI. ANGI was immediately removed as I couldn’t see the point of adding to Mrs Gs anxiety( if anyone wants the sensor send me a PM).

[millimole]

A back to basics question : what benefits are you hoping to gain from having a light on your helmet?

Knowing the answer to this might help you choose the right solution.

I'm a trendy consumer. Just look at my moto g22 using hovercraft full of eels.

[Audax67]

I always used helmet lights for long-distance events*, since they were very handy for illuminating road-signs. In between junctions, though, I kept the light off, since looking down at a white route-sheet with a brilliant white light is a great way of losing your night vision. A permanently-lit helmet light is also a great way of getting woozy 2am idiots on their way home from a night out to flip on full beam for a closer look: "wozzat!??? Oh, a bike" and he shoots on by, leaving you to wonder where the road went.

* in addition to fixed lights on the bike, natch.

[rareposter]

I've used helmet-mounted lights for decades. Modern ones like Exposure Joystick / Diablo are light enough that you barely notice them and they're fully self-contained so no wires trailing. They're very good for adding a bit of depth to the view - bar mounted lights can result in large shadows in front of you on descents but the helmet light opens that up. In fact for full-on off-road riding, I'd class them as essential.

Used them for commuting too (on lowest power), it's great to have a light that's above car height, really helps to stand out. In fact for a few years, when I was commuting almost entirely on cycle paths with only limited road, the only light I had was a helmet one. An insanely bright one designed for 24hr racing but which was brilliant for year-round unlit cycle path commutes.

[mattsccm]

Regarding the helmet. I think you might find that, as a full face is usually only used for downhill type MTBing, you are worrying rather more than virtually very other road cyclist out there. If you really feel that high speed crashes are very likely then maybe either a speed reduction or some skills training wouldn't go amiss maybe?
The light. A properly set up helmet light can be handy but isn't really needed on the road. If you can't see far enough ahead slow down.

[pjclinch]

Hi I am thinking of getting a new helmet the places I ride will be mixed probably more road and some slight off road too. The layout is rather hilly then rather flat too I will be going over 30mph on the hills. I was also wondering are lights legal on helmets? I was thinking of a smart helmet with lights but also a full face helmet for the extra protection. What helmet and style would be safe and legal for mixed terrain and mixed speeds.

Assuming we're talking about the UK there's not really an "illegal" helmet, because there's no legal requirement to wear one.

Speeds are, somewhat unintuitively, not actually that relevant. Helmets are specced for about 12 mph which is the sort of speed you'll be travelling vertically downwards after a typical fall, and the vertical matters because it's the direction you stop very suddenly in: it's not the energy you have when you hit, but how much you lose and how quickly. So unless you go headlong in to a wall or the like a 12 mph helmet can still do its job fine even if you're going much faster, and if you do go headlong in to a wall at great speed you're well over the energies you can expect a cycle helmet to deal with.

As has been noted, full face is really reserved for the more extreme end of cycling, downhill mountain biking and BMX Supercross which is mainly gravity powered and where riders also eschew shorts in favour of body suits and at least in the MTB will typically be wearing body armour and joint pads too. Every now and then you see someone on the road in one but they're very much the exception rather than the rule. In cycle training circles they're not recommended as they may obstruct peripheral vision, but whether that's actually the case I don't know as I've never tried one. For the most part they're reckoned to be significantly less comfortable than alternatives, as I understand it from getting rather hot and sweaty.

When helmets are tested they're put on a headform and banged against various things to see how they do. That testing won't involved extras like camera and light mounts which may well affect the performance of the helmet, e.g. by concentrating impact force at the mounting points rather than allowing a wider area to spread the impact energy better. As above, this doesn't render them illegal because there is no legal requirement to have a helmet at all, but if you are worried about conforming to the general standard you should be aware that after mounting a light you may not be.

As for what would be "safe", it turns out to be rather more complicated than most people assume. We cannot say for sure that on a notional rider a helmet will make them more or less safe (or no real difference), and in any case we need to be careful about what the limits of our definition of "safe" are. You can reasonably expect a helmet to do what it's design spec is about, which is mitigating relatively low energy impacts against parts of the head covered. The frequency of falls that might generate such low energy impacts, typically falls with no other vehicle involved, depend a lot on what you're doing: if you're testing the limits of your skills (like a lot of technical mountain biking does) you'd expect to fall off rather more than if you're chugging along farm tracks, and so on.

If you want a helmet then I'd suggest trying a few on and choose for comfort. Good comfort will typically relate to good fit, and the better the fit the more the helmet can work as designed (plus, obviously, it'll be more comfortable!).

Lights built in to the helmet itself like indicators I suspect aren't that helpful, e.g. how is your right turn signal interpreted when you're looking over your right shoulder? How will they be interpreted by a driver who's never seen the like and is looking at your arms where he expects any signal to come from? And so on.

Pete.

[JerseyJoe]

I use a helmet with a rear red on it, always in blinking mode. In don't know if it makes any difference, but I do feel safer with it on.