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  • Spoke

    SAVED BY THE BELL

    Sep 24, 2017 6 minutes
    Words Jay French | Images Paris Gore & Brian Chapel

    What’s the best way to test a helmet? Is it by going over the bars and headbutting the ground at 35km/h? Nope. The best way to test a helmet is by flying to Whistler and riding trails with Bryn Atkinson. That’s how you test a helmet.

    Crash testing helmets is important, don’t get me wrong. However, I assume and have wholehearted confidence that the good people at Bell Bike Helmets have done this for me. Real-world helmet testing is a serious business: machines that simulate impacts, strict material construction, real-time usage cases, stuff like that. But I wasn’t about to test whether these helmets would protect me in a crash. I’m 99% sure they would, and anyway, I hate crashing. I was there to see how they work for me, a proper punter on a mountain bike.

    Bell are releasing some new helmets for 2018, and it’s my job to see how they go. What’s new

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