this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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Motorcycle helmets, and lawyers.
Most other things, I cheap out on -- for example for my professional tools, I buy a lot of good midrange Chinese brands. Usually quality is high and price is affordable. Same goes for phones, laptops, gadgets, and so on. I live near China though.
I disagree to an extent on motorcycle helmets. Yes, never ever buy a used helmet. ("Open box" might be okay.) Never buy a helmet off Wish, Ali Express, or similar; buy helmets from reputable motorcycle apparel dealers, like SportBikeTrackGear, ChapMoto, or RevZilla. But beyond that, you need to look at safety ratings. Don't get anything other than full face if you actually plan on riding, and that includes modular helmets (the chin bars tend to collapse in a crash). DOT approved (in the US) is bare-bones, and a helmet that's only DOT approved is not worth getting. Snell is... Okay. It's a North America-only standard. ECE is the global standard for helmets. The UK's SHARP - Safety Helmet Assessment and Rating Programme - probably gives the overall best idea of how effective a helmet will be in real-world situations. (SHARP ratings can be frustrating at times, because they don't let you sort readily by date; that means that you can end up seeing a lot of helmets that are no longer produced, and newer helmets may not be listed at all.)
An AGV K1 is going to be as safe as an AGV Pista GP RR, and will be about $200 v. >$1400. My $150 AGV K1 is a better helmet in every respect than my Shoei Neotec, despite the Neotec being about 4x the price.
At the upper end, you're paying for fiberglass or carbon fiber shells (less weight), better aerodynamics, better airflow, and better sound isolation. You notably aren't paying for better safety.
There are new helmet safety standards that started to be rolled out about 3, 4 years ago; not many helmets meet the new standard yet, and it's not clear whether it's a serious improvement on old standards or not. IIRC the new standard is mostly affecting helmets that are used solely or primarily on the track at the moment.
Haha, we're talking about very different things, my friend! Let me give you a little slice of life here:
In my country, the situation is very different. 100% of cheap motorcycle helmets do not provide any real protection and are just there to help you avoid tickets from the police. Many are just baseball caps designed to look like a helmet at a distance. They are like 5 USD, and are universally bad.
A decent (good visor, OK head protection, no chin guard) helmet might start around 20 USD. Full face helmets would be a special order until fairly recently. You can forget about things like "safety standards". I would suspect it to be a sticker applied to the helmet without the standard even being followed.
Even now, a full-face helmet with chin guard costs at least a comparable amount to a used motorbike (~135$). The number of people that would spend 150$ on a helmet rounds down to zero, despite road accidents being frequent and severe.
There are many great things about my country, but compliance with safety standards is a... work in progress. One good thing at least is that the speed limit is 50km/hr on all roads, and is mostly followed. This plus traffic leads to fewer high-velocity collisions at least.
Wat.
My motorcycle cost about 5500$ US, and that was an amazing deal; '12 Honda CBR600RR with 18,000mi/30,000km on the odometer (I've maintained the motor well, even if the body doesn't look great). I've never seen a working motorcycle cost less than 1000$ US, and tires alone are a minimum of about 100$ US/ea. Given that I'm usually riding on mountain roads at, um, about 80mph/125kmph, I would never consider riding with less than a full-face helmet, jacket, gloves, and boots. And 95% of the time, riding pants as well.
I'm from Vietnam. We have the highest per-capita motorbike ownership in the world (last I checked), and have the 4th largest market for motorbikes! This creates some... interesting situations.
Our motorcycles are typically for commuting so have lower engine capacity than most American ones. My Honda Air Blade 2022 is 125cc and cost a bit under USD 2000 brand new. A Honda Wave 50cc (technically 49.9cc) can be had around USD 700 new. A lot of students drive those, because anything under 50cc generally does not require a license here.
Then we've got used bikes. An OK used Wave is probably 300$. Most people don't update the registration on sale though and this creates a mess for the police.
Then... we have "ghost bikes" made from a mess of parts, these are the ones around 100-200$. These are technically illegal, as the motor serial generally won't match the chassis serial -- which means stolen parts. They are the least safe vehicles I've ever seen, and typically driven as a 'disposable vehicle' by people who won't or can't obey the law. So, you'll see them outright driving the wrong way down highways, while text messaging, and carrying steel bars like they're jousting. (No helmet of course). The police know that they can't auction the bike for much, and they have no money on them to pay fines, so it's a net loss for the department to deal with it.
A growing problem is tourists on the roads. No license, no insurance, driving like it's a video game. If they hit you, they run home to avoid consequences. Hope you have money for medical bills!
My daily commute looks like something out of a Mad Max film. I see maybe a few people die per year. This is pretty much why our speed limits are generally 50km/hr (31 miles), even on highways. During peak hours, I'll probably average about 10km/hr.
On the bright side, it's very affordable and convenient! My petrol costs are like 3-4$ a week, and parking is way easier than if everyone had cars.
Anyway, that's a slice of life here! Hope you found it interesting!
That is very interesting, and sounds... Well, like what the US could devolve into if the anti-regulation political right-wing had their way.
I'd prefer to ride a bicycle, but I'm just too far from where I work now.
I see what you mean -- but in our case we generally have this whole set of completely normal (and generally reasonable!) laws -- however the enforcement budget is not high (limited resources!), and compliance is this huge educational problem where a lot of people moved from rural areas to the big city this generation. It feels likely that the USA had a point in it's history like this!
It's getting (a lot) better with time, but this is a common story in the developing world: No enforcement, so few people obey laws. Few people obey laws, so people lose faith in public institutions because of the mess. This leads to low tax compliance, so there's no budget to enforce laws.
I'm an immigrant though, so the compliance expected of me is quite high by comparison and I'm under more scrutiny. Which has worked out to my benefit, because now I know how to effectively use government services!
On a positive note, a lot of people still ride bicycles here! Since most traffic is two-wheeled, it's somewhat more bike friendly than most places I've been in north america. Rush hour sucks though, because you're constantly accelerating + stopping. In moderate traffic, you're going about as fast as everyone else though. Da Nang is an absolutely lovely city to bicycle in.