I recorded the 1979 film Breaking Away on my DVR the other night and I noticed the black helmet the lead character had on. its being listed as a hairnet on other websites. Me being young and dumb, I never wear a helmet when I ride but Id rather be safe than sorry. Well I just want to know everyone opinions on this before I save 3 paychecks to get one. Are they even safe or are they just for looks? I kind of like its style.

Personally, I would go for protective, air flow, protective and relatively inexpensive. I think I spent $40 on my helmet.

Almost entirely for looks.

Three paychecks for that? Time to find a new job!

He said "helmet".

Looks. That helmet will do very little.

Foam helmets. Expensive doesn't usually mean better. Fit is important but if you can find a cheep helmet (which usually has more material) that fits as well as a swank $300 one, it will likely provide better protection.

Helmet manufacturers are finally putting some R&D into helmets again with the recent increased in traumatic brain injuries due to the increasingly high speeds, bigger airs and greater danger of outdoor sports. Manufacturers like Scott and POC have improvements out in 2014 like multi-dentisity/layers etc so better absorb impacts.

Upright town cycling is not a dangerous activity and in good cities with the right infrastructure I do not think choosing to not wear a helmets is stupid. However, it seems to me that the group of adult youth who are choosing not to wear helmets often are fixed gear/fashion conscious cyclists. Fixed gear riding is often and aggressive, risk-taking style of riding (moves like Quicksilver and Premium rush have shown that to the masses). To ride in this style with out a helmet is stupid. To ride a road bike without a helmet is also stupid, as is mountain biking of any kind. Whenever you travel at high speed on pavement mixed with several ton speeding metal objects you should be protecting your head. If you hit your head at those speeds you will have lasting effects. Current research shows that as few as three mild concussions will cause permanent and noticeable damage to your brain. One hit at speed with concrete will cause permanent damage to your brain, it doesn't heal the rest of your body.

that is not a helmet and will not protect your head in a crash.

if you're ready to spend big bucks on having a cool looking helmet, try a Casco Attack:

Does Kucharik still make those? Even back in the day they were not considered great, I think they were originally conceived as a protection device for seizure patients, at least that was the urban rumor. We all knew that a "Hair net" helmet was of little use other than for very minor shock absorbing. The top racers way back rode a "Bannani" a patent leather affair with all the longitudinal ribs secured, and a token ear covering. I got one to replace my Lambertini vinyl covered hairnet. The Cinelli helmet of the day was a UCI joke protection wise, good for a pursuit race on the track.

The Skid Lid was also not much better, the Bell V-1 Pro was probably the best real protection, Ron Skarin rode one and by his use made it "cool" to a point, but heavy. As it was hot, I am amazed he did so well with it. He later went back to a hairnet type for some races in 1975. The most famous where he won the Manhattan Beach Grand Prix in a late solo break and flipped his helmet off crossing the line, Ralph Therrio was also away and just far back enough to reach down and scoop it up before the pack sprinted in.

Weren't they considered high tech in their day? I mean at one time a seat belt was just what is now called a lapbelt and everything thought it was all the safety you needed.

Look at football helmets this was all you needed back Jim Thorpe's day and it was high tech!




A 'hairnet' would look really cool tooling around on your '73 Hearse or Colnago but go for something that works like a midrange Bell.

Nice to display, but not much more protection than one of these …

Nothing says 'Tough Guy" better than a hairnet

IMHO those foam helmets were absolutely useless, as were some of the early hardshell helmets made by Brancale. $40 to $60 gets you a half way decent helmet that is hard shell and easily adjustable to your head size. Bell and Giro make most of them today, although Trek and Specialized also make nice ones. Less than $40 and you are getting a basic helmet. More than $100 and you get a lighter one with lots of slots for airflow.

I found the Bell Solar (I think still in production) good and cheap. Retire it after 3 years of use or the first crash. My noggin does not fit a Giro well.

When I rode motorcycles, the saying was if you have a $10 head, wear a $10 helmet. By modern standards, the Kucharik is a $10 helmet.

i'm also fond of this Casco helmet:

Kucharik stopped making them several years ago. John Sr. passed away a few years ago and the place is run by his son. When I started going there in the early 80's John Sr would give me training advice. I still stop by the shop a couple of times a year.
Getting back to the helmets, Kucharik was involved in a lawsuit regarding their leather hairnets and it was not a subject John Jr wanted to talk much about. Last year he did finally bring one out to hang on the wall as a display which is how I "use" mine - it is a great wall hanger. Someday I might use it on a vintage ride. They were certainly more robust than a Cinelli hairnet which didn't offer much more protection than putting a few toe straps across your head.

Kucharik has a nice, loyal following. Their best products are the toe warmers and headbands.

I think I'll pass on the hairnets and just wear a decent helmet. I'll just have to learn to bite my tongue when I get made fun of.

I've got one of their of their old wool jerseys. They made good stuff. Still do I guess.

No one's making fun of you here. Just passing along valuable safety advice mixed with a little tongue in cheek humor so the helmet issue doesn't get out of control and morph into an argument. Which it is known to do.

Those old leather helmets are neat to have. But no good for using.

That is pretty cool.
I could look like Montag in fahrenheit 451.

I like it. I have a couple of Bern helmets gotten on close out. Pretty sleek. But not as
Coolio as that one.

A number of years ago, one of the testing labs tested a "hairnet" so they could see if it could pass and to use as a comparison. They didn't get their data. They put the hairnet on the instrumented head and dropped it. The instruments inside broke. You can expect your brain to do the same thing if you crash in one of those things.

I wasn't saying the people on here were making fun of me. Its people around my town that make fun of me when I do. Haha

Fignon, Kelly, LeMond, Hinault, Anderson...and the rest fo the gang did not even bother with those leather "hairnets" when they raced most of the TDF..... (Not sure, but hairnets might have been required on mountain stages)....
Did they think they just did not provide that much protection anyway??.....Nahhh, I don't think so as other than hairnets, all there was were goofy big, plastic mushroom cap style helmets like Bell Bikers and Skid Lids to find maybe better protection... I suspect like many of us back then, the pros also thought they just look way too dorky to be seen on a race bike with.....
Yes buy one, but not for riding....Maybe just for Holloween??

Oh boy, a helmet discussion!

When the Bell first came out a big to-do was made in the various media about why it was better. The physics make perfect sense. It goes something like this:

Your head will be traveling at some velocity downward when it hits the pavement. When it hits it must decelerate from that velocity to zero within the thickness of the helmet's compressible padding. A helmet will be as thick as it can be for a given weight, so you have only so much distance over which to decelerate and lose all that downward velocity.

The difference in helmets is in their compressible material. If the material is springy and rebounding, for example like foam rubber, the deceleration will be minimal for the initial compression but will increase as the compression increases. (A pure Hooke's Law spring would mean the force, and thus the deceleration, is proportional to the amount of compression.) The head's deceleration and thus it stress on the brain therefore reaches a maximum at full compression.

If the material is destructively crushable instead, it will decelerate the head immediately as crushing begins and the amount of deceleration will be constant until it is fully crushed or the head stops. To obtain the same loss of velocity in the same compression distance, its deceleration, which is constant over that distance, will be only half the maximum reached with the springy material.

Of course if the material fully compresses before the head's velocity reaches zero, then the last increment of movement is a really hard bump. But if the thickness if the helmet is great enough, the inelastic-compression material wins easily.

So the helmet standard says assume such and such a velocity in a fall from rider's height to the ground, and choose a material and thickness such that the maximum deceleration never exceeds a particular value. Now, one could argue about whether those numbers are appropriate, conservative or liberal, useless, or whatever. But regardless of the numbers, for equivalent thickness the helmet with a crushable material will be better.

That's why the guts of all good helmets today are a crushable foam, and why they should not be used one they have suffered any crash at all.

We and many other riders began using the Bell as soon as it came out. It was comfortable, looked only slightly dorky, and worked in theory. Better'n nuthin'.

I doubt anyone is making fun of this guy.

Stem isn't slammed.

Amateur.