A fellow employee at my work has started bicycle commuting, and is loving it. He has been great about trying to learn safe commuting habits, but can't wear a helmet. The reason is he has some mighty rasta style dreadlocks, and there is no way he can fit his head into a helmet. Is there anything he can do? Does anyone make a dreadlock-friendly helmet? I was thinking there might be a way to wrap a protective foam strap or something around the forehead....

What is more important? A cool looking or fancy hair style? Or a protected head? I wonder what his thoughts would be when he has an accident, suffers a head injury & has to learn the alphabet or how to walk all over again? I'm guessing he would be thinking, "gee I should have traded the hair style for a helmet". Sorry but I just don't buy the cool hair style excuse for not wanting to or being able to wear a helmet. There are ways to accomplish it. Even if he has to cut his hair to be able to wear a helmet, then so be it.

This kind of reminds me of the old seat belt commercials. Where you see a woman who does not want her dress to get messed up by the seat belt. Then in the next scene you see her in a wheel chair in a vegetative state. But by god her dress still looked nice.

Don't get me wrong it does seem to me from the thread that this guy wants to wear a helmet & is not opposed to the idea despite his hair style & he as a bit of a loss as to what to do about it. But he may have to sacrifice his hair style to keep his head protected in the process of riding a bike.

My advice is figure out a way to keep his hair style & still wear a helmet correctly. If that doesn't work then start cutting his hair until he can wear a helmet correctly. Maybe he will still be able to keep his dreadlocks, even if they are cut shorter then what they currently are. What ever the case may end up being he does need to wear a helmet.

Cut the hair.

simply thread every dread through the vents on the helmet and never take the helmet off. Pretty soon the hair will have adjusted to this and you could even get a cool red gold and green helmet to really make the rasta colors fly.. Helmets are pretty light nowadays right?

Weave carbon fiber into the dreads and instead of beeswax, nattie 'm up with epoxy.
-voila, dread-helmet. Grow a new helmet every couple years.

Some helmets have a secondary cloth covered foam padding for comfort.
Having lots of hair will do the same, try removing the pad from lrg helmets.

Schwinn make Huge adjustable helmets for people with fat heads. Lol!

:

The carbon fiber suggestion doesn't sound like a bad way to go. I'm sure someone has to make big helmets, though.

I'd recommend the following option.

Buy a larger helmet and remove the padding.

im all for the threading the dreads through the helmet vents. just get a high end helmet wiht the really big vents.