Full-Face Bicycle Helmets
Summary: Some bike helmets offer limited protection for the face. Most lack the fully-padded chinbar that makes motorcycle helmets more protective by far.
Our inquires about bike helmets with full facial protection come from two sources: parents of boys and riders who have smushed something.
Helmets for kids
For child riders there was for a time a very interesting helmet out there among the cheaper ones. It is by PTI, and was branded as a Mongoose. Parents may find it useful for crash-prone boys who seem to go into everything face-first. This innovative helmet is labeled Child BMX and is model number MG-108. It is a thin-shell BMX model with the thick crushable foam liner wrapping all the way around to form the chinbar. It is an interesting design and the first we have seen with a fully padded chinbar for bicycle use. It has minimal vents. It is made for PTI, usually branded Mongoose, and sold by stores supplied by the distributor Pacific Bicycle. We found them at Toys R Us for $20 in mid-2003, or $15 on sale. Until 2007 you could see them on the Mongoose Web site.
In 2007 a company known as Helmets R Us, a long time supplier of bulk helmets to helmet promotion campaigns, introduced a child's or youth helmet called the Face Saver with a chinbar. The company will take individual retail orders, but sometimes has a minimum of $30.
BMX
Kids also use BMX full face helmets for their "Bicycle Motor Cross" events. They are usually made with a hard fiberglass shell and minimal vents. Most of them do not have crushable foam in the chinbar. Adults generally find them too heavy and hot for bicycle use, leaving the rider with a wet head even in winter. But the kids ignore the sweat and use them for short BMX events in the heat of summer, so they are not out of the question for some riders in some circumstances.
For the adult
For adult riders, there are more choices, but nothing with a full padded chinbar. The helmets are known as downhill mountain bike racing helmets. We don't know how much protection you get from a chinbar that lacks crushable foam, but at least these are bicycle helmets, with ventilation. You can find them in our latest helmet article.
Motorcycle helmets are another possibility, but like the BMX helmet they are heavy and hot for bike riders. They do have fully padded chinbars, and will meet one of the motorcycle helmet standards like DOT or Snell, far surpassing the impact protection and coverage of bike helmets.
Not recommended
We can't recommend any of the current hockey helmets for bicycle use, despite the face protection some of them have. Hockey helmets are just not designed for bicycle-type impacts and do not meet the impact protection requirements of the bike helmet standard. The same applies to football helmets or helmets for most other sports. Unlike a bicycle helmet, many of them are multi-impact helmets, but they are not designed for a hard hit on pavement.
This page was last revised on: August 19, 2007.
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