5 Of The Best 5 Star Rated Helmets

If you’ve read our article from last week you’ll know that an expensive helmet doesn’t automatically make it a good helmet. But are all 5 star rated helmets created equal? In this article we look at what we think are the five best 5 star rated helmets, both budget and premium. Money might not buy you extra safety in the case of some helmets, but it can buy you comfort, quality and features.

Nitro Aikido – From $139.95

Given its rock bottom price the Nitro Aikido is one helmet that just can’t be ignored. If you want good head protection at the cheapest price then the Nitro Aikido is the helmet for you. And despite the cheap price, the majority of rider feedback is that it’s a decent all around helmet.

Positives:

• Value for money


• Comfortable


• Aerodynamic. Minimal drag when turning the head at higher speeds


• Misting/Fogging clears up quickly when at speed


• Removable liner

Negatives:

• Noisy – earplugs are a must


• With vents open there is a fair bit of turbulence inside the helmet


• Average to poor vision. The eye slot is shortened on the ends, cutting off peripheral vision and requiring the rider to turn their head more than other helmets.


• Pinlock compatible but does not include a Pinlock insert

Caberg Vox – From $125

Caberg is a helmet manufacturer you’ve probably never heard of which is a real shame – they have six helmets rated at 5 stars by SHARP and the most expensive is only £145 ($226). The Caberg Vox can actually be purchased at some online retailers for only $125 which actually makes it cheaper than the Nitro Aikido.

Positives:

• Possibly the cheapest 5 star helmet you can buy


• Built in sun visor


• Removable liners

Negatives:

• Average ventilation


• Sun visor is prone to fogging


• Average noise

Shoei Qwest – From $366.99

Even though most helmets all look the same, Shoei somehow just manages to make their lids look that much better.  And while the Shoei Qwest is one of Shoei’s cheaper helmets, it still pretty much has all the features you’d want.

Positives:

• Very lightweight


• Very quiet

Negatives:

• Some fogging of the visor when stationary


• Venting not as good as the Shark Race R Pro or AGV Corsa

Shark Race R – From $599.95

The top of the line helmet from Shark, it combines lightweight materials, race track aerodynamics and minimal wind noise in a highly attractive package. Shark might not have the same brand credentials as Arai or Shoei, but they make helmets just as good.

Positives

• Minimal wind noise


• Excellent ventilation


• Lightweight


• Comfortable


• Almost as good as the AGV Corsa, but $200 cheaper

Negatives

• Slight fogging in humid conditions


• Padding tight around the cheeks

AGV Corsa – From $799.95

The most expensive helmet featured here at a RRP of $799.95, which means for the price you could buy around 6 Caberg Vox’s. But that’s the same as saying you could buy a dozen Toyota Camry’s for the same price as a Porsche 911. You get what you pay for and while the AGV Corsa has the same 5 star safety rating as the other helmets here, it’s leaps and bounds ahead in quality and other features compared to some of them.

Positives:

• Excellent ventilation


• Lightweight


• Anti-lift rear spoiler (that dislodges in a crash)


• Expanded eyeport for improved visability

Negatives:

• Price


• Better suited to the track than the street

 

5 Of The Best 5 Star Rated Helmets

Where You'll be Injured In A Motorcycle Accident

In an ideal world all motorcyclists would cover themselves from head to toe in the best protective gear money can buy.  But things aren’t ideal.  Not everyone can afford top the range safety equipment.  Sometimes, the heat conspires against riders – who really likes being clad head to toe in thick cow leather when the temperature is over 90 degrees?  And is it really necessary to wear all the gear for a quick five minute ride down to the shops?

This article isn’t designed to beat you over the head telling you to wear ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time).  You’ve chosen to ride a motorcycle (a risky mode of transport), you can choose your risk level when it comes to protecting your body.  But perhaps after reading through some of the statistics and findings of this article, you’ll have a change of heart and realise that it is worth your while putting one some proper motorcycle pants.

Also, this article won’t focus too heavily on head injuries from not wearing a helmet.  Firstly because if you’re reading an article on motorcycle safety, I’d dare say you wear a helmet.  And secondly, if you don’t wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, there’s really nothing that hasn’t already been said to change your mind.  Unhelmeted riders are 40% more likely to die from a head injury than someone wearing a helmet and if that’s a statistic you’d like to be a part of, more power to you.

What this article will look at is the risks to other parts of your body from not being fully geared up.  What are the chances that you’ll injure your shins, forearm or elbow?  What possible injuries are likely to your feet if you decide not to wear proper motorcycle shoes?  We’ve based this article on a number of sources.  One is from the Motorcycle Council of NSW which in turn based its findings on multiple sources since 1981.  The second source is a journal article by the George Institute for Global Health, which published its findings in 2011, making it one of the more recent studies conducted. We’ve also collated data and read published journals plus information from the US Centre for Disease Control.

Keep in mind that with our findings, they are collated from presentations to hospitals or as reported by paramedics.  So if you have an accident where you get cuts or bruises and you just go to a GP, that statistic will not be captured here.  Nor obviously would it be captures if you have a crash and don’t hurt yourself at all.  So keep that in mind when reading below.

We’ve also made an infographic to capture the most important factors in an easy to read format which you can look at below.

So let’s take a look at the various parts of your body and see what gets hurts the most.

Arms

Your arms (excluding your hands) are the second most likely part of your body to be injured in a crash.  Thankfully, the majority of arm related injuries are soft tissue injuries which can be greatly reduced or eliminated by wearing a proper fitting jacket.

The most likely place to get an injury on your arm is the forearm and many times, the soft tissue damage will occur where your arm is exposed between your glove and the cuff of your jacket.  Hence, a gauntlet style glove that overlaps the jacket sleeve offers the greatest protection.

Fractures do occur too, and though armor in the elbow and forearm will reduce this, it’s not a failsafe.  Good armor in the elbow is critical – you really want CE2 rated armor here as a chipped elbow is actually a far worse injury than a fracture. A chipped elbow will result in the elbow hurting when moved and the elbow may click or lock.

 

For those that did not wear any sort of protection, 91.9% sustained an injury to their arms (the highest injury being abrasions and cuts, followed by bruising, sprains and then fractures).  Of those that did wear a jacket, 78.3% had an injury, reducing to 69.7% if that jacket was armored, with brusing and some abrasion being the most likely result.  Most interestingly though is that those that wore an armored jack were almost half as likely to receive a fracture as those that wore no protective clothing on their arms. That’s a huge improvement in protection.

Back and Spine

A spinal injury is probably one of the most feared by any person, motorcyclist or not.  Medical science still cannot do much to help with spinal injuries compared to a broken arm or leg.  Paralysis is almost always permanent.  Thankfully, back injuries are amongst the rarest of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident.

Unfortunately, there’ s not much you can do to prevent back injuries. Research suggests that most motorcycle-crash back injuries are caused by bending and torsional forces, not direct impacts to the spine (EU 2003). Foam inserts do nothing.  In fact, one study showed that those with foam inserts in their jackets had a higher injury rate than those without any padding.

 

Those with a proper back protector did fair slightly better, reducing the injury rate to only 8%.  But given back protectors are there to soften direct impacts, and not torsional forces, there’s little one can do to truly protect the spine at current levels of protective technology.

 

Hands and Wrists

Hands are important.  They assist you in riding a bike, typing on a keyboard and picking your nose.  And the bones in your fingers are among the smallest in your body, so it makes sense to protect them.

Wearing gloves doesn’t appear to make a huge difference to preventing fractures or sprains. Those that wore no glove were just as likely to experience a fracture as someone who was wearing an armored motorcycle glove.  Sprains were slightly higher for those not wearing gloves. But the biggest difference is in cuts and abrasions.  Those that did not wear any sort of glove had 55.6% chance of suffering from abrasions and cuts whereas the riders who wore proper gloves, that figure dropped down to only 14.8%

 

An older study by Hurt et all in 1981 stated that those wearing gloves were 50 per cent less likely to injure their hands in an accident.

Legs

Your legs are the most likely part of your body to be injured.  If you don’t wear any protective clothing, studies show you have up to a 92% chance of injuring them in an accident. In other words, it’s almost guaranteed you’ll injure legs in some way if you don’t wear proper protective clothing. And unfortunately, even if you do wear armored pants, there’s still a nearly one in three chance of sustaining an injury.

Wearing or not wearing protective pants has almost no impact on bruising or not, but it dramatically cuts down on cuts and abrasions (72.5% chance reduced to 33.3% chance) and also reduces the likelihood of sprains.

 

But if you’re involved in a crash at high speed, there’s not much armor will apparently do to protect you from a fracture.  The chance of receiving a fracture is almost identical between protected and non-protected riders. But if you want to reduce the chances of needing skin grafts, wear some proper pants.

And remember, denim jeans don’t count. The denim will disintegrate within seconds of sliding down the bitumen.

Feet and Ankles

I like my feet.  They help me walk and kick stuff.  They also help me move my gear selector on my bike and press the rear brake pedal. And I’m quite fond of my pinky toe, too.

But did you know your feet are the most likely part of your body to contact the road in a crash?  And while not many people don’t wear shoes when riding, it’s the type of shoe that counts.  Joggers and sneakers won’t do much at all. In fact, there’s a good chance they’ll come off in a crash.

 

Over one in two riders who just wore normal shoes sustained a foot injury, usually cuts and abrasions after the shoe came off. But if you don’t want to buy full on motorcycle boots, you can actually get away with a normal boot that secures firmly to your foot.  In fact, the study by the George institute showed that a standard boot was actually safer in all respects than an armored motorcycle boot, save for cuts and abrasions. Riders wearing armored motorcycle boots had higher occurrences of bruising, fractures, sprains and internal injures.  Not by much mind you, but higher nevertheless.

Chest and Abdomen

Your chest contains lots of important bits like your heart which helps you love, and lungs which helps you breathe in traffic fumes.  The good news is that internal injuries are fairly rare, impacting only 7% of riders.

Chest injuries are most likely to be caused in an impact with another vehicle (Otte, 2002). And there is a point at which nothing can save you from the impact with another object. The only protection is avoidance.

 

Like back protectors, chest protectors won’t do a huge amount to minimise injuries, save potentially from bruising

Conclusion

By wearing protective clothing, you will:

• Greatly reduce and in some cases eliminate abrasion injuries


• Greatly reduce, but not eliminate bruising


• Reduce fractures

Wearing protective clothing will do nothing to:

• Make you a better rider


• Make others around you better drivers

At the end of the day, physics cannot be overcome and crashing into a stationary object at high speed or being hit by a 5000 lb vehicle will cause serious, or even life ending injuries.  ATGATT will greatly reduce some types of injuries and slightly reduce others, but at the end of the day, your best protection is being aware of not only your limits and the ability of those around you.

Ride safe.

 

[i] National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Traffic Safety Facts, 2008: Motorcycle Helmet Use Laws. Washington (DC): National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation; 2008.

 

Where You'll be Injured In A Motorcycle Accident

Buying Motorcycle Gear from AliExpress - Is it Safe?

We all want the best we gear can get for the lowest possible price, and that’s why many bargain hunters end up buying their motorcycle gear from Aliexpress. But is it safe? Are the goods genuine? Are the prices too good to be true? We’ve bought a selection of gloves, jackets and pants over the past 18 months from the online superstore so you don’t have to and our conclusions should help prevent you from wasting your hard earned currency.

For those who haven’t heard of the website before, Aliexpress is the online retail arm of Alibababa, a massive Chinese e-commerce company that acts as a source for thousands of importers from all over the world to buy goods and then sell them locally. Most of the stuff you buy on eBay? It’s sourced from Alibaba at a wholesale level or Aliexpress for smaller players. At it’s initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange, it was valued at $231 billion.  Amazon is only valued at $144 billion and in stark contrast, Alibaba is actually profitable.

You can buy motorcycle fairings, rearsets, sliders, decals, replacement parts and clothing, be it gloves, boots, jackets or helmets. But we’re not talking about t-shirts here that you buy for looks. Motorcycle protective clothing is for just that – protection. So are all the Alpinestars gloves and Dainese jackets genuine?

Some of the products you buy are obviously fake. Dodgy looking logos, sizing that’s completely wrong and exotic materials that are clearly not what they’re supposed to be. But some goods are so realistic that if you put them side by side with the same product at a retail store, you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Perhaps they are genuine – there is the potential they’ve come from the same factory as the full priced items but I’m basing that judgment at a superficial level. The stitching and dyes which hold everything together may very well be poor (and cheap) imitations which completely changes the structural integrity of the product. Here’s what we found.

Gloves

We purchased a number of gloves from Aliexpress as follows:

• Alpinestars S1 (RRP of $159.95 on Revzilla, $29.95 on Aliexpress)


• Dainese Full Metal RS (RRP of $349.95 on Motorcycle Supestore, $80.00 on Aliexpress)


• RS Taichi RST369 (Now discontinued, but $39.99 on Aliexpress)


• REV’IT Summit H20 (RRP of $134.99 on Bike Bandit, $49.99 on Aliexpress)

As you can see there’s a massive difference in price between what you can get on Aliexpress compared to general retail stores. So is it a case of too good to be true? Pretty much.

The RS Taichi gloves were the best out of the four. We honestly couldn’t tell the difference between them and the genuine article. And out of the four pairs of gloves we purchased, they’re the only ones we crash tested – numerous times. They held up perfectly. I have no doubt the carbon fiber palm sliders and knuckle protectors are just plastic, but nevertheless they did the job.

The next best is the REV’IT Summit H20 gloves. They look genuine, the feel genuine but for some reason they just seem off and I can’t put my finger on why. The Alpinestars S1’s looked genuine until you take a closer look. First of all they’re pleather, not leather. Secondly, you know they’re fake because the logos are in the wrong places and the holes on the wrists aren’t fully perforated.

 

But by far and away the worst were the Dainese Full Metal RS gloves – upon opening the packaging they came in you can see that there were no pretensions on whether these are real or not – it looks like they were put together from the spare parts bin and sown together haphazardly. The stitching was awful, the leather on the fingers was frayed and the supposed titanium on the knuckles was not only just plastic with a metallic looking paint, the rivets that attached them to the gloves were already coming loose.

So would I every wear gloves from Aliexpress? Well, if they were all like the RS Taichi gloves, I’d probably consider it for the street. But seeing as our success rate was only 1 in 4, you’re probably going to end up spending just as much on gear from Aliexpress than if you just paid full price for the genuine article. And there’s no guarantee how these gloves would hold up on the racetrack if you slide down the asphalt at 100 mph.

Jackets and Pants

From a superficial level, the jackets we bought from Aliexpress actually looked all genuine, which I suppose is because larger textiles like jackets are much easier to make then gloves which have lots of fine details. For our jacket testing, we purchased three jackets:

• Dainese VR46 Textile Jacket (Now discontinued but $109.95 on Aliexpress)


• REV’IT Tornado Jacket ($329.00 on Revzilla, $119.95 on Aliexpress)


• RS Taichi RSJ275 Jacket ($315 on STG, $135 on Aliexpress)

Unlike the gloves we bought, every jacket looked and felt genuine. Like the RS Taichi gloves, we crash tested the RS Taichi jacket a few times and it held up really well. The problem with these jackets though is the armor – how can you have any confidence it is actually CE2 rated armor?

You can’t – there is no way to be sure the armor is the real deal as opposed to some generic plastic. Below is a picture of the shoulder armor that came in the Dainese VR46 Textile jacket from Aliexpress, compared to my Dainese Air-3 Textile jacket which I purchased at a bricks and mortar store:

Can you tell the difference? Which one is from the Aliexpress jacket and which is from the jacket I bought at a shop? The one on the left is from Aliexpress, but I could not tell the difference from either look or feel. If the Dainese VR46 Textile jacket is fake, it’s a perfect looking replica. Perhaps it is genuine and it’s just excess stock (or it fell off the back of a truck). But I won’t personally wear a jacket with anything less than CE2 armor, and I just can’t guarantee that the armor from Aliexpress is.

Pants

We gave up on purchasing textile motorcycle pants after the second purchase because the sizing was so bad. Our purchases were:

• REV’IT! Tornado Textile Pants ($289.99 on Revzilla, $128.00 on Aliexpress)


• Alpinestars A-10 Airflow Textile Pants ($269.95 on Motorcycle Superstore, $86 on Aliexpress)

The sizing was way off – the XL would maybe have fitted a 12 year old, but not me. Why the sizing for the pants is so wrong when the jackets were good, I don’t know. But it obviously reveals the products as fake.

The REV’IT Tornado pants otherwise looked genuine, though we noticed the stiching was pretty poor in a few places. The Alpinestars A-10 pants weren’t even a good replica – details were completely different and not only was the waist way too small for it’s size, the length was laughably short.

Helmets

No. Just no. A million times no. There are thousands of listings on Aliexpress for LS2, HJC, AGV, Bell and other brand name helmets. But please don’t do it. As we’ve recently posted, helmet safety varies widely even among genuine items. Are you really willing to risk your brain to save a few hundred dollars?

We didn’t purchase any helmets from Aliexpress to test, so we can’t comment on the quality or how close they look to the real thing. But it’s like the armor in the jackets – the risk is far too great in wearing them. And if you’re really unlucky, you’ll end up buying a Bell motorcycle helmet and getting something you weren’t expecting:

This purchase of a Bell motorcycle helmet turned out to be fake. Can you spot why?

So like just about everything in life, if it’s too good to be true, then it probably isn’t.  Buy genuine, because is your body (and your life) worth saving a bit of money over?

 

Buying Motorcycle Gear from AliExpress - Is it Safe?

The Amazing Numbers Behind the 2015 Ducati 1299 Panigale - Full Specifications and Price

It’s been a few days since Ducati has unveiled their new flagship model, the 2015 Ducati 1299 Panigale. That’s because we really wanted to delve into the figures and technology behind this bike and from what we can see it’s one of, if not the most sophisticated motorcycle ever made. It’s been overshadowed somewhat by the hype surrounding both the 2015 Yamaha YZF R1 and the Kawasaki Ninja H2/H2R but this bike is something else again.

First, let’s look at a few numbers key numbers. 205 horsepower, 144.6 Nm of torque and 190.5 kg wet weight. In isolation they already sound impressive, but when compared to other contemporary motorcycles they are in fact quite amazing.

[table id=17 /]

Two numbers really stand out – the weight of the Ducati 1299 Panigale and the torque of it’s engine. Unfortunately, not every motorcycle manufacturer releases both the wet and dry weights of their bikes, so a perfect comparison can’t always be made. But the Panigale 1299 weighs 14 kg less (dry) than the Aprilia RSV4 and just under 14 kg less than the BMW S 1000 RR with all fluids. These are impressive numbers from what are already light bikes. The Panigale ends up with a power to weight ratio of 1.07 hp/kg – pretty much the best seen in a road legal motorcycle save for Ducati’s own 1199 Panigale Superleggera (which wasn’t really a full production bike given only 500 were made at a cost of $65,000).

And that torque. That number of 144.6 Nm is nothing short of amazing. In fact, it reaches 117 Nm of torque at a mere 7,000 rpm. That’s more than the peak torque of any of the three bikes we’ve compared it to above and they’re the best of the best. Only the new supercharged Kawasaki Ninja H2 would be able to compete with that sort of power delivery, and it’s supercharger causes it to weigh over 30 kg more than the Ducati.

In addition to what is an amazing engine, The Ducati 1299 Panigale also features the most advanced suite of technological gizmos available in the one bike. Like the new Yamaha R1M, it features an Inertial Measurement Unit which measures acceleration in relation to the X, Y and Z Axis and calculates the bikes roll and pitch. With this the IMU and the ECU looks after:

• Cornering ABS


• 8-stage, lean angle sensitive wheelie control


• Ohlins Smart Electronic Suspension (available on the Panigale 1299 S)


• Quick Shift for both up and down shifts


• 8-stage, lean angle sensitive Ducati Traction Control


• Engine Brake Control


• Various Riding modes

There are plenty of bikes with those things available, but there’s not one bike that has them all at once. Also like the new Yamaha R1M, Ducati has fitted a GPS device which works with the Ducati Data Analyser.  It automatically records the timing of each lap every time the 1299 Panigale crosses the finish line of a racetrack. When the rider, crossing the finish line, presses the high-beam flash button, this highly innovative system records the coordinates of the position and then records the timings of each successive lap once it’s been completed. This data can then be downloaded and analysed and even includes details on rear wheel spin and lean angles.

 

And just to confuse things slightly, because the 1299 Panigale’s engine is too big for WSBK, there’s also a 1,198 cc capacity version called the Panigale R. Amazingly, it still outputs the same 205 hp as it’s bigger capacity brothers. And while torque is down slightly to 136.2 Nm, it actually weighs even less at 184 kg with all fluids, hence it’s power to weight ratio is an incredible 1.11 hp/kg.

Ducati has created an incredible machine and it’s so good to see that while they’re pushing the envelope with horsepower, they’re not doing it at the expense of weight. Kawasaki, take note.

Pricing so far has only been released for the United Kingdom, with the 1299 Panigale listed at £16,995, the 1299 Panigale S with it’s electronic suspension at £20,795 and the made for racing Panigale R at £28,995. Release date for the United States and most other countries is expected around February of 2015.

[table id=18 /]

The Amazing Numbers Behind the 2015 Ducati 1299 Panigale - Full Specifications and Price

Is An Expensive Helmet a Safe Helmet? An Look at Helmet Safety Ratings and Price

“If you have a $10 head, buy a $10 helmet. If your head is worth more, buy a Bell.” That was the famous ad that Bell ran in the 1970’s and it’s still often quoted today when people talk about motorcycle gear, especially motorcycle helmets. It sounds right – who puts their faith in something cheap over an expensive item, especially when it comes to safety? But how true is that today? Is that $700 Shoei really what you need to keep your head safe or can you get away spending only $150? We’ve collated as much data as we can and analysed the correlation between helmet prices and their safety and the results are pretty surprising.

We took our data from the UK Government organisation SHARP, the Safety Helmet Assessment and Rating Programme. It provides by far and away the most comprehensive motorcycle helmet safety testing data available freely online. It’s obviously UK centric though, so we’ve stripped out the helmets that aren’t readily available internationally. We also removed all models that appear to be discontinued and finally only included brands that had at least three helmets rated once the above criteria was met.

Below we have charted those remaining helmets, and you can them see by each helmet listed individually and by a brand as a whole. Hover your mouse over the individual circles to see the helmet name, its rating and its price. Note that the prices on the Y-Axis are in Pounds Sterling (£).

Create Infographics

Now let’s do some analysis.

If we put a trend line through the graph like below, you can see that the trend is that the higher the helmet rating the higher the price, but only marginally. In fact the most expensive helmet in our data, the Arai RX-7 GP only receives a 4 star rating from SHARP, but costs £589, or around $1,000. Compare that to either the G-Mac Pilot or the Viper RS-33, both of which are the equally cheapest helmets in our data and cost only £40 or around $65. Like the Arai, they also receive a 4 star rating.

To demonstrate it even more starkly, the Schuberth S1 Pro is listed at £450 and only received a 2 star safety rating from SHARP. It received ‘Poor’ results for both left and right side impact tests and yet it is more expensive than all the 5 star rated helmets except three.

The cheapest 5 star helmet you can buy is the Nitro Aikido which costs £70 or around $120 on Amazon. The Nitro Aikido was first released back in 2011 and is still produced today. They’re a good example of why you shouldn’t take brands on face value either. If you’d previously heard about the Aikido and it’s great value for money, you may have assumed that the rest of the Nitro range was as good.  And while the Aikido is damn good for the price, it’s the company’s only 5 star helmet – they even have a few 2 star rated helmets for sale. In fact,  the safety of Nitro’s helmets almost increases as the price decreases:

On the flipside, the most expensive helmet money can buy if you want a 5 star rated helmet is the AGV Corsa.  The AGV Corsa is listed at £550, or around $750 at Revzilla.  But if safety is your only concern and you really want to wear the same brand Rossi wears, you can save yourself $450 and buy the AGV Stealth. Again, this shows that helmet price doesn’t necessarily correlate with helmet safety.

Of the major brands by far and away the most disappointing is Schuberth. Not only is the average price of their helmets the most expensive of all the brands featured here, they also have no helmets with a safety rating of 5.  But they do have two helmets with a safety rating of 2. If there’s any example of expensive helmets not equalling safety then Schuberth is it.

So how much is your head worth? Well, if you’re short on funds, about £70 for a Nitro Aikido. But while a helmet like the Nitro Aikido provides the same amount of safety as the AGV Corsa or Shark Race R Pro which cost up to seven times more, does it make it necessarily a good helmet?

Of course not, and safety and price are just two of many factors you should consider. But don’t be fooled by the price (or brand) of a helmet. Never is the phrase ‘Buyer Beware’ more important than when it comes to protecting your head. If someone had asked you before reading this article if you thought a $700 Schuberth S1 Pro was safer than a $120 Nitro Aikido, I’m sure you would have gone for the former.

In part two of this story which will be published later in the week, we’ll take a look at the best five helmets that are rated 5 stars, including comfort, noise levels and price.

Is An Expensive Helmet a Safe Helmet? An Look at Helmet Safety Ratings and Price

Chak Motors Molot - A Russian Superbike

And now for something completely different – the Chak Motors Molot, a heavily modified 2013 Honda CBR 1000RR built in St Petersburg with a wild appearance and supposedly, some pretty incredible safety features. In fact, Chak Motors describes it as the safest motorcycle in the world.

But who are Chak Motors? Well, according to their website, Chak Motors is a Russian motorcycle company based in St. Petersburg, specializing in designing, producing custom, handmade motorcycles. The company was founded by Igor Chak, a Russian born American designer. Other than that little blurb on the company’s website, there’s not a lot else that I can find on the company. Igor Chak’s personal website describes how he lived in the US from the age of 13 and ended up working for Nokia as a prototyping specialist, before eventually moving back to Russia in 2012.

So how is this the safest motorcycle in the world? Well, it features what is a first for motorcycles – Predictive Emergency Braking System (PEBS).  According to Chak Motors, it works in three types of common situations. Firstly, if a car in front of you is coming to a stop, and for some reason you’re not paying attention, PEBS will send you out a warning via a flashing light on the dash and a light vibration in the handlebars. If you fail to react, PEBS will send a maximum vibration and apply a small amount of pressure to the brakes and if that still doesn’t work, PEBS will take control of your brakes and apply full pressure to stop the vehicle to avoid a collision.

The system will also work in a situation where you do not have any time to react (like if you’re too close to a car in front of you and it brakes suddenly and quickly), PEBS will apply full pressure to avoid a collision. PEBS works with two radars up front, one short range and one long range and an HD camera that is mounted in the headlight.

 

It’s certainly a potentially great feature, however I’m always circumspect of these types of things on single track vehicles – it works fine on cars but motorcycles are inherently unstable. I’d be worried about such a feature activating in corners where most ABS systems won’t do anything to keep you from lowsiding. And despite claiming this as the world’s safest motorcycle, it doesn’t feature any traction control or other electronic devices save for ABS.

In does however offer blind blind spot monitoring, probably an unnecessary item for a motorcycle but some may find it welcome. There are two sensors located in the rear cowl of the bike, one on each side, once you are ready to make a turn, a blind spot sensor will detect that there is an object and will send you a warning which is a light on a side mirror and a vibrating pulse in the handle bars.

Then there is a lane Departure Warning System (LDWS).  If you become distracted from the road ahead and your bike stars to swerve to the left, LDWS will detect that you are departing from your lane by giving you a pulse vibration to the handle bars. The system is disabled when you turn on your turn signal.

But whatever you may think of it’s claims about safety, you have to admit it does look unique. It’s extremely angular and aggressive and looks more like what you’d see as a prototype at a motorcycle show rather than something going into production. And currently Chak Motors is only taking preorders for the Molot before it enters production.

Chak Motors Molot - A Russian Superbike