I have two different helmets.
I have a half helmet for when I'm tooling around town. And for the long rides I have an HJC CL-Max. It's a modular. A full face but the chin bar and shield both will swivel up. As for tinted shields and such all helmets are designed for quick swap so you can run tinted in the day and swap to a clear for the night. Bell is still around and you can find em at Walmart.
CL-max
My next helmet will be the IS-max
I highly recommend not buying a helmet over the internet. Reason being not all helmets fit the same. They are different from manufacturer to manufacturer. So go to your local shops try on many helmets and even walk around for a while with the helmet on to feel for any potential "hot spots".
And don't fall for the idea that Snell is any better then a standard DOT helmet.
A snippet for Snell vs DOT
Anyone read the helmet article in the June edition of Motorcyclist? I picke the mag up on my last trip to read the article. Basically the mag got an independant research lab to "crash test" various helmets to see how well they protect.
They go through and describe how helmet manufacturers test their helmets to see what standards they meet. The article goes through and tells you how G loading is where the danger lies and that G loading of over 300 is deadly. It also shows you that in most cycle accidents there are two or three other injuries that are just as life threatening if not more then those to the head.
Now Snell requires a helmet to be able to withstand a drop from 10 feet onto a small steel ball about the size of an orange. Not once but twice!! not a very real world test now is it.
MC grabbed a piece road surface and invited all kinds of companys to supply helmets for testing. (companys had no clue what kind of testing)
Well the lab put a sensor laden weight into each helmet and measured impact forces from various hights. Now remember G loading is the force at which the "brain" impacts the skull. The lower the better 300 is sure to cause death in older less healthy people.
The lab then dropped all the helmets from the same hight onto this peice of concrete (which most cycle riders will impact anyways) and measured the G loading. After it was all said and done the Snell helmets subjected the "brain" to Gloads from 181 Gs to 211 Gs. While the DOT only helmets showed a G loading from 152 to 182.
So basically they say the DOT helmets are just as safe if not safer then Snell helmets. The only bad part of the DOT helmets is that the company does not have to submit their helmet to an outside source to confirm compliance where the Snell ones do. It also talks about the European version of standards and those G loads are 161-174. These helmets must be submitted to outside sources for compliance testing. I highly recommend reading this article. It's an eye opener and they really did their homework on backgound info and give you both sides of the story pretty well. It's a rather lengthy read. I in no way did justice to this article with the couple of paragraphs I have written.
Again this article was in the June 05 edition of Motor Cyclist magazine for those that are interested.
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