Glasses and helmets

[Dave-the-rave]

An open face helmet might eliminate the problem. Then again i might be accused of being mental.

I hated using glasses, ruined loads of them so my advice would be get a couple of cheap sturdy types if you're intent on riding with them. My lightweight £200 rimless Police ones broke under helmet, and my lovely D&G sunglasses, I opted for laser surgery after five years of deliberation and can now buy cheap sunglasses and no misting up, best thing I ever did.

[rictus01]

wore glasses for the last 12 years so a good 500,000 miles worth, the trick is to get glass with the thin straight arms, well for me it is as the arai's I use have a nice groove between the pads they slid down, I hardy know they are on, of course misting and spray effect them, but a good buff with washingup liquid normally avoids that, but as Colin said, don't forget to take your helmet with you when choosing.

Cheers Mark.

[Sir Trev]

Originally Posted by mister c

I always try a helmet on to make sure my glasses fit snugly underneath. It grates me sometimes because I see a really nice helmet, which is comfortable on your head, but then can't put my specs on.
I even take my helmet to the opticians when choosing new glasses, just in case

My optician never batted an eyelid when I wore my lid to try on new glasses. Some of the folks in the shop gave me funny looks but what the heck.

My recommendation is flexible frames. Had mine for about ten years and had the lenses replaced twice due to hazing. Never had a problem with my last three lids and they're very light. The brand name is Flexon but I'm sure there are more options to try. Pairing them with an Aria works well as Rictus said as they have cutouts in the padding for the spec arms.

[bladesuk1]

used to wear glasses up until i broke a set of rimless glasses under a helmet while on my intensive das training course. on day one, too. meant that i rode around all day with a splitting headache, and ultimately failed the test.

but then it got me thinking: what if that had happened at night? or when i was away from home on the bike? what if both lenses broke rather than just one? did that mean keeping a spare pair with the bike all the time? how often would they break? how much would that ultimately cost?

i tried contacts: very dry eyes, ultimately culminating in having a lens stuck on the front of an eye requiring about an hour of attempts to take it out, lots of eye drops and artificial tears, and a sore, scratched eye. my wife, on the other hand, has no issues wearing contacts at all. i would say, though, that you do run the risk of having them dry out under a bike helmet depending on the airflow in the helmet.

so i got mine lasered. cost was around £1200 (wavefront epi-lasek), but now i have better than 20:20 vision, can wear any helmet i like, and don't have to worry about being unable to ride.

for the record, lasek hurts more, takes longer to heal, but ultimately doesn't leave you with a weakened ring of tissue in your eyeball. personally, i felt that the risk of head trauma causing that weakened ring to burst wasn't worth the avoidance of a week of recovery time.

if you *must* stick with glasses, then i'd suggest going to optical4less for cheap glasses, and sticking a spare pair under the bike seat just in case. i'd also suggest a flip-front helmet (e.g. caberg trip or whatever the new version is called) as that makes it trivial to get glasses on safely, and avoid rimless lenses as they're weaker and won't take the same stresses. flexi-frames are supposed to be good, too, but they're expensive.

[Ch00]

Shoei seem to be good for glasses not had any problems yet with the set up. Even my crappy Caberg is ok.

Cool, thanks for the opinions and experiences everyone. I'd forgotten to mention or question if a flip front helmet would help matters. I've got a trial pack of glasses from glasses-direct that have arrived at home today so I can try them on sans the silly looks too so not so bad, I'll back the BFI* meter down a notch or two to avoid sending them back bent

* = Brute Force & Ignorance

[bladesuk1]

my old flip-front caberg trip did well enough with them, but in the end the glass lens just snapped. might have been the action of closing the flip-front, or it might just have been the stress of adjusting the helmet while it was on my head - i don't really remember, i'm afraid. think it was the latter, though.

i'd seriously think about the lasers, though - can't recommend it enough!

My glasses slide on easily within my helmet (Shoei Qwest) but my sunglasses (Polarised Oakley Blender's) hurt my head each time I put them on due to them not having flexible frames... and christ does it hurt. Once they are on its fine.

[NTECUK]

Dark visor time Woogie