I’ve had mine since day 1 (xxx). Fair caveat - I broke my jaw and skull in a wreck and had a bad concussion from same wreck, so I’m susceptible to any helmet marketing claims. None the less I bought it - the study seems legitimate to me and the price wasn’t ridiculous. The helmet has much better ventilation than I expected and I noticed no weight difference. I can’t put glasses in it but I rarely do that anyway so no big loss on my end.
I get the hype may have been misleading, but I honestly think that says more about us consumers than treks team. They were excited to bring a (potentially) groundbreaking advance in safety and the rest of us were like: “Yeah for sure my brain is important but does it make me FASTER and is it CHEAPER.” Perhaps we need to reassess our motivations.
The issue is that they were overly vague in their marketing teasers (and yet too suggestive in one particular way that was misleading). Everyone leaned towards a “bike-related” assumption, especially since they specifically pointed to “carbon fiber” as a material change. So it was almost a bait and switch when it turned out to be a rider gear item instead of a bike one.
It’s like a person saying “I have a surprise for you…” and hinting it would be something for one part of your life (new bike gear), and then finding out it is a pair of socks. I know this is potentially a life altering product for those that put it to it’s fullest design intent, and I bought one partly because of that.
But the backlash against this when people expected something very different is pretty well deserved, IMHO. Trek could have handled it differently to avoid the confusion and still built the suspense that they wanted.
Regardless, I think this is a simple lesson that marketing attempts to inflate a product release are just as tricky as they may be rewarding. As a more pragmatic person, I tend to avoid those types of bold claims, but I would likely be a terrible marketing person
Couple that with the new pissing match between them and MIPS, and you get a deflation to their product release. Each of which, Trek/Bontrager should have (and may well have) expected and planned for, but who knows?
Overall, I think this release is awesome for cycling. More companies doing more things to try to make cycling safer? Yes please!
I don’t see these helmets being very good with ventilation. The Smith helmets with Koroyd are notoriously hot. I’ve worn one on a summer ride and I can vouch for that. Dear me, it was like wearing an oven!
I may have this wrong, and this is not a scientific analysis, but the angle at which the channels in the Koroyd material were oriented seemed to block all incoming air and only allow heat to escape “straight up” from the head on it’s own. It basically felt no different when riding at 25mph and 0mph.
I fear something similar with the new WaveCel tech. We already have a few of them here at the office, and while the channels to the rider’s head are larger, they still seem to block the majority of incoming air.
Now, I know ventilation falls secondary to protection, so I want to reiterate that I think this is a really good thing. But, I don’t feel like this marks the discovery of a holy grail in helmet design.
Yep! Ventral Spin will be my Leadville helmet for sure. I may helmet swap to a Ventral Air on the climb up to Columbine and back up Powerline, but it vents well enough that I don’t think I’ll see much benefit.
I picked up a Specter last Friday and rode in it for about 5 hours over the weekend in Pisgah and Dupont (western North Carolina). Yep, same issue with the sunglasses. It never occurred to me that the waves would be sharp- if anything, it feels smoother and more comfortable than I expected from just looking at it. Wouldn’t anticipate any issues in a crash, but then I have a good amount of hair and, if I’m remembering right- GPlama doesn’t?
The temps were really mild this weekend but my head still felt a little warmer than expected, so I suspect @Jonathan is right on the ventilation front.
Yup, exactly. Trek has mismanaged expectations here. Perhaps the marketing department got swept away by the enthusiasm of the engineers. They should have underpromised and overdelivered — and quietly built their expertise in new manufacturing techniques.
I think you could argue though the press and coverage of their new tech has been greater than if they low-key said hey we have this new helmet technology. While the reaction hasn’t been 100% positive because they were misleading, I’m sure the discussion would have been quite a bit less otherwise.
I agree, but do you want publicity or good publicity? I’d rather that people catch on after a while that this new way to structure materials to give them very special properties is something really important, instead of producing hype and perhaps not living up to it. That is especially true if you think of any new technology that has entered the market: how much better were the first fully carbon road bikes compared to the extremely mature aluminum bikes? The advantage of carbon only became visible after many years, because that is how long it took for bike manufacturers to understand how to design and manufacture carbon bikes.
I’m quite sure the same is true here: if Trek continues to invest into WaveCel-like materials, then the real payoff will be much farther down the road.
Listening to the latest Downtime Mountain Bike Podcast. They are discussing Making Helmets Safer with Brad Waldron from Kali Protectives. I just got to the part of how testing standards were developed, what helmets must do to meet them, and how current information on small crashes add up.
This phrase caught my ear: “We are creating more brain trauma than we should” b/c the helmets are too hard. They go on to discuss G forces – 80% are below 100Gs. Yet brain trauma happens below that point.
Not a greatly thought out post, but dang there is some information in this podcast. Listening and typing this while at work.
“MIPS tested the helmets with commonly used test methods for helmets in angular fall and following the same test protocol as WaveCel. When tested at the speed of 4.8m/s MIPS found no difference in risk injury reduction between helmets equipped with WaveCel and those helmets just equipped with EPS foam. In the 6.2m/s impact case, there was a slight reduction, but not consistent with the communicated claims.”
4.8m/s is roughly 10.7mph and 6.2m/s is roughly 13.9mph.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not super concerned about the 10-14 mph crashes. What’s MIPS say about the data at 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 mph crashes?
I am. My family doesn’t care what my crash speed is. They care that I come home after every ride.
In a prior life I played a lot of ice hockey. Impacts were probably all <10 mph onto solid ice, boards, or with hard frozen rubber pucks. They hurt. Head impacts, at any speed, are potentially traumatic.
I have also come off the bike at high speed. I think the speed at which a person comes off the bike doesn’t correlate with the speed of their head making contact with the ground.
If you’re referring to a head impact in MTB where a noggin makes solid contact with a non-movable object like a tree or rock at high speed, maybe that’s different. My only point of reference is the road.
I think it’s because the vast majority of accidents, in particular with cars, happen at those lower speeds, and even those accidents are associated with high risks of brain injury. So, from a brain injury prevention standpoint, the number one priority is to reduce injury risk at those speeds.
Even if you crash above those speeds, your head is likely to hit the ground at a lower speed, if another part of your body hits the ground first.
I believe that those speeds are indicative of what the vertical component of velocity is when an adult falls off their bike. This is determined by how far the head is from the ground (so it might be a little faster in your case ).
The assumption is that the horizontal component of the velocity is not relevant if you crash on the flat and not into something. This may be a flawed assumption, but it is at least a starting point (in much the same way as car crash testing is into a concrete block head on and half head on, but always square on and not aiming at the corner of the block). Fundamentally, if you crash into a building head first at 25mph, no helmet is going to stop a head injury.
For my concussion I scorpioned head first into the ground at around 25 mph. I don’t know what the actual speed of my head was but my front tire stopped and I went around it while clipped in like a pivot .
Good lord. What helmet were you wearing? Whatever it was, that’s the helmet I want (given that you appear to be successfully steering the ship of an awesome company post-crash).
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