Originally Posted by
elcruxio
One thing which as well bothers me with helmets currently is their price. Just got a new bell yesterday and it cost me 40 euros. That's like 60 USD. For a person making 500 euros per month that is not a small sum. When considering that cycling should be a cheap alternative to driving a car this stuff mounts up.
Now it doesn't really matter that my bikes cost me 3k since they are already bought (in a time when i had more monnee) and that I would rather get 100% bike and zero safety gear than a crappy bike and safety gear. With the 100% bike I might never get into a situation where I need safety gear.
I know I know there are alternatives to buying a helmet from a store but I'm curretly pissed about the expense. I could have bought so much more actual useful stuff for my bikes with that money (like a litre of rohloff chain oil for example)
Regardless what Rydabent said, which is true what he said, you do make a point too. $60 or more, which probably the average helmet bought here in the US cost $110, is still nothing but a thin layer of plastic over styrofoam, with cloth covered thin foam padding, and cloth straps with plastic buckles, add on top of that they're made in China shouldn't cost more than $60 for a top of the line helmet! Aerodynamic racing helmets may cost a bit more due to wind tunnel testing, otherwise there's no cause for these expensive helmets.
But welcome to the world of bicycling where like most hobbies it's a sport considered to be taken up by people with disposable income so the industry rips us off to take advantage of that income. Consider this, there are bikes on the market that cost $8,000 up to $15,000 seen on the streets, yet you can get new racing motorcycles for those same prices, so which object, the bike or the motorcycle employs the greatest degree and expense of technology? right, yet a simple non complex bicycle can cost more than a lot motorcycles. That should tell you were the profits are going. Another example, tires, you can get skinny little bicycle tires that can cost $35 up to $110 that will last 1,500 miles to 3,500 miles yet you can buy car tires with far better technology internally that will last 20 to 40 times longer and in some cases 50 times longer, which means you would have to buy an average of 20 tires for one car tire, that's an average expense of $2,000 for a pair of tires over the average of 50,000 miles for the same expense of just $200 for car tires.
See this for more of an eye opening experience I'm trying to convey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF4MIEkIBZs