my name is mwd

It’s that time again when we had to replace our motorcycle helmets, which meant a lot of trying on hats in different stores: buying a motorcycle helmet is not something you can readily do over the internet, as how they fit and feel is such a key part of it. We couldn’t even just buy the same-as-last-time, a trick we’ve done before, as last year a new safety standard came out meaning all helmets have effectively been redesigned in the last year, as explained by Ryan F9 in this video.

It was quite liberating though to think that the new standards are improved such that pretty much any helmet is going to be a good standard, so you can ignore any price and branding and just try on hats until you find one that both fits and has the requirements you have. We wanted flip down sun-visors and good wind protection, so that narrowed the pool, but even then it meant we had several brands in the running we’d not heard of before.

In the end though, we did end up going back to the brand we had before (and before that), but interestingly enough the new redesigned helmets meant we’d gone from XL to L, so it was very much still the case the physical store won. For this we had to travel multiple times to Harlow to Sports Bike Shop, who both had a good range in, and made it easy for us to order a bunch more helmets (4 in fact) to be delivered to that store from their warehouse for us to try on, making getting the right hat that much easier, so props to them.

Also we learned that if you buy the intercom unit with a helmet you don’t have to pay VAT, as it’s then considered part of the helmet and thus zero rated, where-as if you buy it separately it’s a gadget and you do. We’ve never had an intercom before, so it’ll be interesting to see how well they work.