Cheap vs Expensive Motorcycle Helmet – Crash Tested

I was recently reminded of a saying I heard back years ago when I was still racing. I was looking for a new helmet to have painted to match my car, and the only real consideration I had given when asking was “the cheapest thing I can find”. One of my friends, an older racer who had been in a couple of crashes, told me point blank “If you have a ten dollar head, then put it in a ten dollar helmet.”

Obviously this got my attention because, in my youthful state, I’d simply written off the fact that I might actually need the helmet to do it’s job one day and protect my noggin in the event of a crash. After receiving this advice, I expanded my search to higher-quality helmets and ended up going with one from Stroud, a company with a long history of building great products without charging and arm and a leg.

In the video below, the YouTube channel known as FortNine put a couple of helmets through a series of tests to see if there is really that much difference in a thirty dollar helmet versus one that costs three hundred. While at first glance there may not appear to be too much difference between the two, a closer look reveals there are indeed some major flaws with the cheap-o brain bucket that should prevent anybody from ever buying one of these helmets, like the fact that ships inside a taped-on plastic garbage bag and reeks of glue when it arrives.

Go ahead and hit that play button on the video below and just watch as this guy hammers both of these head protectors, and one of them continually performs well while the other fails time and again. If you don’t think enough of your head to protect it, we probably aren’t going to change your mind anyway. We’re speaking to the intelligent folks reading this, with hopes that they don’t cut coroners and leave themselves in a vulnerable position with a crappy helmet being the only thing between them and their mortality.