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The Best Bike Helmet for Commuters
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The Best Bike Helmet for Commuters
We get it. You don’t race in the Tour de France. You don’t ride off cliffs, à la Red Bull Rampage. You can’t even do a wheelie. All the same, if you ride a bike—even just to work and back—you should wear a helmet. Slick leaves, loose gravel, wet trolley tracks, they can all bring you down, so protect your noggin. Since 2015, we’ve examined more than 70 helmets and tested more than 20 in person to determine that the classic Specialized Echelon II is the best bike helmet for commuters.To get more news about ebike helmet, you can visit magicyclebike.com official website.
The Specialized Echelon II has safety and comfort-improving features unique in its price range, including an adjustable harness that wraps fully around the head for even pressure distribution. The chin straps are less fussy than any others we tried, and our testing panel of more than 10 agreed its ventilation is as effective as that of much more expensive models with larger cooling vents. The current model has a slightly rounder back than the one our panel initially tested, and that’s a good thing. Ever since Greg Lemond won the Tour de France in 1989 wearing a Giro Aerohead, the tail has been an inescapable presence in helmet design, even though it offers no performance benefits for anyone cycling slower than 35 mph (all of us). Worse yet, some experts suggest that a tail is actively hazardous in the event of a crash since it can potentially snag on the pavement and tear the helmet off. Specialized now only offers this helmet in the MIPS version, which costs $100 (up from $70 for the non-MIPS version); however, going MIPS-only is a trend we’re seeing throughout the helmet world, so we don’t consider this to be a deal-breaker. (It’s still not been proven conclusively that MIPS actually prevents concussions.)
If you don’t mind a thicker, less-ventilated design, save a few bucks and get the Specialized Align II. It’s the most affordable helmet that hits all our standards for fit, including three size options and a dial-in adjustment mechanism. Taking an approach that’s atypical for models in this price range (but standard for costlier helmets), Specialized makes the Align II through in-mold construction. This means the plastic shell is fused to the protective foam liner, instead of taped or glued, resulting in a stronger helmet. In addition, MIPS comes standard on this helmet rather than as a costly add-on (which again, is a trend we’re seeing across almost all helmets).We spoke with many helmet-industry experts for this guide, including leading designers and lab technicians who have been crash testing for years. And we wanted to learn about helmet aesthetics, too. If everyone keeps complaining that they feel stupid in a helmet, must we keep making helmets in ridiculous shapes?
So we talked to John Larkin, the president of Machine Language. Larkin is an industrial designer, and his specialty is bike helmets. If you’ve shopped around recently, maybe you’ve seen the Thousand helmet—he created that shape as well as at least a dozen other recognizable profiles.
Next, I spoke to Isis Shiffer, inventor of EcoHelmet, which won the 2016 James Dyson Award for design. The EcoHelmet is a foldable helmet made of paper—yes, paper. It’s a conceptual design awaiting CPSC certification; the idea is that city commuters could purchase them out of a vending machine. Shiffer is definitely an expert on what is essential to head protection and what’s not.
Via email, I interviewed Bjork Fjellstad, the managing director at Sweet Protection, a Norway-based performance brand. They are advocates for MIPS, a new helmet safety tech. (We’re not yet convinced you need MIPS to stay safe, so don’t run out and replace your helmet just yet.)
We also got design insight from Jon Raymer, then the bike category manager at Smith, and Steve Johnson, then the laboratory manager (he’s now the executive director) at the Snell Memorial Foundation, an independent helmet testing lab that helped establish the certification procedures currently used by the CPSC. He patiently answered our questions about tiny differences in crash testing procedures.
As for me, I’m a senior staff writer at Wirecutter, and my beat has been outdoors safety equipment for years. But the real reason you should trust me is that I’m a believer. Whether you want to wear a bike helmet is pretty much up to you.1 But speaking for myself—well, I’ve been hit by a car twice. One of those times, I landed head first on the squared-off edge of a concrete curb. My helmet likely saved my life.