Originally Posted by
Smaug1
Re. helmet ridicule: When my brother and I were kids, Mom took us to spend summers with my grandparents, all through the 80s. He had a couple of folding bikes from a phase he'd gone through that we rode all over town. He insisted we wear his son's old hockey helmets though, which we thought was just horrible. We were the only kids in town wearing helmets.
My brother crashed once going at least 25 mph* down a steep hill. banged up his face and broke off a tooth, but no head injury, thanks to that old hockey helmet! Hockey helmets did have some ventilation, maybe more than the original bike helmets. I wonder why they didn't realize at first that ventilation was necessary?
Among the early Snell-approved helmets, the MSR Research version didn't have much ventilation. But the Bell Biker had several large vents front and back. more than any hockey helmet of the era.
Maybe you're thinking of the Pro-Tec helmet, although that used spongy foam rather than expanded polystyrene and thus was not approved by the governing agency (the USCF, I think) for racing use.