Ski and Snowboard helmets. Do you? or don't you? ride with one!! Have you been saved by one?? What are you using? and how is it?

[oldfartrider]

Started skiing 58 years ago and snowboarding the last 33 years. Been wearing a helmet over 20 years. I don’t mind it at all in fact find it keeps me warmer. A few years ago I hit my head in ice in a fall. Was glad I had it on

 

[2Planker]

I started wearing one after responding to my 2nd fatality from head trauma. That was in 1995

Don't leave home without it....

 

[da-bum]

Have a Giro polycarbonate full shell helmet. Slid on a boilerplate during a high speed turn, rotated and went head down facing up. All I can see was the sky until tree branches started appearing in my sight and I knew something unpleasant was coming my way. My head slammed into the pump cabin on the side of the trail while my shoulder hit a rock that was right in front of the cabin. In addition to sliding off the trail, I also dropped around 5 feet as that's how deep the base was compared to the barely covered area where I crashed. Was a little woozy, damaged my rotator cuff, snapped my CF pole. The helmet, having a polycarbonate shell, survived, and so did my head.

Had a couple of crashes on my bike too, got doored when wearing a fiberglass shelled helmet. Flew straight into a stationary mail truck, forehead got a deep cut by the sharp edged metal handrail at the back of the truck, otherwise the helmet shell and my head survived. Another dooring incidence while wearing a POC helmet. Head didnt suffer much, but shoulder took the blunt of the force when it slammed into the curb, breaking my collarbone.

BTW, POC's newer safety feature is SPIN, which instead of a slippery liner inside the helmet, uses wiggly pads that allows it to shear in any direction.

 

[Teleskier]

Isn’t it interesting that some of the very people who express finger-wagging religious-zeal lecturing disbelief that some OTHER adult skiers don’t wear helmets like they do (when it truly is their own personal decision that only affects them), are the very same people who refused to wear facemasks in ski resort public spaces and gondolas during the early pandemic (which truly does affect and infect and protect others so is not just a personal decision).

How many studies noted that football hits became much harder and much more dangerous when players suited up in shoulder pads and padded hardshell helmets and armor to feel - both consciously and unconsciously - invincible. If an adult knows how wearing a helmet personally affects them to likewise ski less safely, in similar “I’m hard-shell protected and I just wanna hit something” manner from their Pop Warner muscle memory, or “I ski much faster and TRY to hit branches for thrills in my hard shell than I do in a knit hat,” then I have absolutely no problem respecting their personal decision. For THEM. It’s their decision. They are being responsible for them. It’s their head. It’s their psychology. Not yours.

I think it’s an especially American cultural trait, that we insist everyone else must do exactly WHAT I do, and HOW I do it, with missionary fervor. People are different. Live and let live. Laissez faire. It’s their head. Do what works for you. And get over it.

 

[BodeMiller1]

I've knocked myself out cold 4 times on a mountain bike in the last 6 months. Never been hurt skiing (except blew part of my knee in the St. Valentines storm at SR).
I ski with my football buddies from high school, and they wear helmets and can't believe how reckless they are. Butt, they know everything until they get hurt.