You Might Be Surprised At the Results
Crushing a motorcycle helmet with a hydraulic press isn’t the most scientific test of a helmet. That said, it does demonstrate the weak points of a helmet when that helmet is put under extreme amounts of pressure. The team over at the Hydraulic Press Channel on YouTube recently got a bunch of different bicycle and motorcycle helmets to see how much pressure they can withstand.
As you might imagine, the higher-dollar, premium motorcycle helmet seems to do better than the cheap polycarbonate one. The cheap helmet actually changes shape before it really gives in to the pressure. However, if you were wearing it, you’d be long dead before the helmet’s structure totally collapsed. The higher-dollar helmet manages to hold up to more pressure before seriously distorting.
Is this the most scientific of motorcycle gear tests? Hell no. In fact, it’s not very helpful at all, but it is a whole lot of fun to watch. The big surprise comes from the third motorcycle helmet to be tested. It’s an open face helmet and manages to withstand a lot of force before giving in. While it managed to withstand the most force, it offers far less protection overall, and as I said above, this test hardly replicates any real-world crash. You can check out the full video below. Skip ahead to about the 4:30 mark to see just the motorcycle helmets.
