Australia – An alarming number of long term motorcyclists suffer from hearing loss.
If you know any motorcyclist who has been riding more than 20 years the chances are they don’t hear as well as they ought to.
The culprit is the helmet.
Helmets average around 93.5dB(A) at 100Km/hr. As speeds rise helmet noise can increase to 115dB or more. That’s like standing next to a Jumbo Jet engine!
Cars interiors aren’t noisy so why are helmets?
The average car interior is 85dB(A) at 100Km/hr and many cars would be less than this!
Many experts agree that prolonged exposure to 85dB(A) can result in hearing damage. This suggests that helmets should aim to be under the 85dB(A) or less. Yet the fact that I could only locate one helmet at 85dB(A) suggests we’re not doing enough.
Should helmet noise be reduced?
Many riders argue that you should wear ear plugs.
Fact is many riders don’t wear them.
Fact is that car drivers don’t either but don’t suffer hearing damage.
Some riders argue that they wouldn’t be able to hear properly if the helmet was quieter. At 110dB you would need a sound of roughly 110dB before you notice it.
It’s more likely that making your helmet quieter will help you hear things that you couldn’t hear before eg. When you drive a car you can hear quite well despite the fact it is quieter than your helmet.
How can helmet noise be reduced?
There are many possible approaches to reducing noise:
- Reducing wind noise is primarily an engineering issue ie. Create smoother helmets.
- Better insulation will reduce noise.
- Different materials or laminates may also reduce noise by preventing conduction of the vibration ie. Have a natural damping effect
- Active noise reduction… this is a technological approach which requires existing sound waves to be neutralised by opposing waves. It can reduce noise to 80dB(A) at 115Km/hr and so has the greatest potential.
Do quiet helmets exist?
The Schuberth S1 averages only 85dB(A) at 100Km/hr. This is 8.5dB less than the average helmet. This might not seem like much until you realise that this represents roughly a halving in perceived sound.
What could we do to encourage quiet helmets?
We can make it mandatory to list the noise of a helmet at 100Km/hr.
We could institute a 5 star rating system for noise.
We could offer an award to the manufacturer who designs the quietest helmet.
Quiet helmets are the way of the future. They are likely to become more popular because of health and safety issues.
Hearing damage is a cost to the community.
If all it takes to stop hearing damage from occurring is a bit of education (manufacturers and the public) that’s hardly a big ask!
Michael Czajka
Hi, I live in UK; I have been riding for over 43 yrs (I am 61) and still ride a 30yr old BMW all over including European trips.
I noticed the start of tinnitus about 15 yrs ago and started using earplugs.
It has gotten slightly worse but in speaking with various doctors I genuinely believe that they helped to delay a worsening of the symptom.
My advice for what its worth, until quieter helmets; wear musicians earplugs (They allow more sound at different wavelengths through) They do differing protection so you CAN find one that works for you.
OR alternatively, listen to the ringing, its fun NOT.
I’ve ridden motorcycles since the mid 70s, and have worn ear plugs when riding since 1988. My ears ring a lot of the time, but is it down to motorcycles, or using chainsaws without earplugs before I knew better? Or because my brother fired a 12 bore shotgun in my bedroom (don’t ask, but it was some alarm clock!), or because I fired a pistol inside a pickup truck cab (again, don’t ask, I was young. It was very loud). Then again, maybe because a friend fired a shotgun next to my ear from the back of the same pickup truck? (it was a very long time ago). Maybe being a blacksmith for a while had an impact too. Hard to differentiate the impacts of each noise event. But yes, riding bikes has probably damaged my hearing. I used to ride a very noisy Ducati, but couldn’t hear it because of helemt wind noise.
Unfaired bikes seem to be quieter; standing up out of the wind makes wind noise vanish in most helmets I’ve owned.
Making a helmet so insulated and quiet isn’t the answer; you need to hear what’s happening around you. Helmets need to be designed so that they produce less wind noise; this is what damages your hearing, not your pillion screaming at you to slow down. There’s a difference between having a quiet helemet, i.e. one that produces little noise, and a helmet so quiet that you can’t hear anything. We need the former, not the latter.
And; a Schuberth C1 may be quiet, but the C2 is one of the noisiest helmets I’ve owned. No more Schuberths for me.
I have tinnitus caused by years of riding motorcycles.
I use foam earplugs but different fairings and wind conditions still create a very noisy environment inside a helmet.
With regard to quieter helmets, I have had a number of different helmets over the years but find that the greatest difference in noise is due to the type of bike I am riding.
I find my unfaired bike to be much quieter than my faired bikes.
It seems that the fairing or screen on a bike concentrate turbulent air flow around a crash helmet. Side winds and following other vehicles also seems to affect this airflow.
For this reason I think it is very difficult to assess how noisy or quiet any particular helmet will be.
Safety Nazi’s were strongly in mind when the article was written. The idea was to highlight useful information while discouraging undesirable legislation.
The level at which hearing loss occurs was drawn from guidelines agreed upon by audiologists and work based legislation. There weren’t any suggested figures higher than 85dB(A) for continuous exposure.
The point about a quiet helmet is you wouldn’t have to turn the music up to drown noise out… making the experience much more pleasant.
Although a Schuberth S1 helmet would be great… availability in Australia is also almost non-existant… we’re the only geographical area without a distributor.
It would be great if a few other manufacturers stepped up with quiet helmets to fill the gap in the middle and low level price ranges. It would be great to add a few more helmets to the list of 85dB(A) helmets.
Perhaps someone could come up with an even quieter helmet?
I’d be very keen to test any quiet helmet… but only Schuberth have included an objective measurement of noise in their marketing literature.
🙂
I live in the North of England (Yorkshire) and would use a helmet whether or not it was a legal requirement, mainly to keep my head warm, and flies from sticking to what teeth I have left (you can always tell a happy motorcyclist by the volume of dead flies stuck to their teeth) and yes most helmets are noisy.
The problem we could be faced with if the safety nazis latch on to the noise issue is the cost of a suitable helmet, yes Shuberth helmets are quiet but at a price.
Unfortunately we live in a world where end users quite often want legislation / standards introduced to ensure that manufacturers have to produce a product which will comply with these requirements.
I do agree that a basic design standard should apply as it does within the EU regarding helmet and eye protection manufacturing. However, the drive to legislate or regulate various so called safety equipment drives up the cost of this equipment and in my experience the people who complain about the cost are the very same people who wanted legislation introduced.
I have had a bike licence for over 42 years, I have owned and used just about every style of helmet, yes my hearing is not as it used to be and I have covered in the region of 620,000 miles on a motorcycle, I have tried various methods of ear protection and found every one of them distracting and irritating my ears. Most of the damage to my hearing was caused by my time as a toolmaker in an engineering company, my love of drag racing / sprinting motorcycles and music.
Everyone talks about hearing damage due to helmet noise, I would like to see just how many riders have hearing impairment by helmet noise alone rather than a collective statement that so many decibels will do this or do that.
My current way of dealing with wind noise is to turn the music up in my helmet headset, and yes this will probably damage my hearing even more.
Ian Lee
That was an interesting article – especially if you read the article on Vietnam too. So wearing a helmet, not only can make you deaf, but can cook your brain?
Where I come from (Scotland) the most important reason for wearing a helmet is to stop your nose from dropping off due to hyperthermia or to stop the midgies from blinding you (although they tend to do that anyway by splatting all over the visor)
– and because its the law.
If it wasn’t the law (or freezing cold – as in Scotland), I wonder how many people would wear helmets?