Jenming said:
The question isn't really the need for e-bike rated gear (helmets and tires are what I've been seeing). It's whether the new e-bike rated gear that is coming out is actually better (or at least a way to easily spot top tier), or just a way to charge more money.
ah; that wasn't quite clear to me in the first post. it sounded as if you were asking if the helmet was good enough for you riding at 35mph. if you don't ride any faster than the bicycle helmets were designed for, then the ebike helmets may not be enough different to worry about.
if they use the same materials as the bicycle helmets (cheapest way to make them), they'll be thicker (larger) and heavier (not a lot, but some), to absorb more impact energy from the higher speeds. if they have to absorb twice the impact, they'll have to be twice as thick.
if they use different materials, then i couldn't say what the physical differences might be, size- or weight-wise.
that said...what i said before about the test setup vs a real crash still stands. if the test standard doesn't happen to cover the actual crash situation, then any testing by manufacturers under that standard also wouldn't "guarantee" protection against that crash situation.
as a too-specific "for instance" (the tests surely cover more than one case; i have not read enough of it yet to know what the test cases are): if the test standard covers only persons of a mass of 120lbs or less striking their heads sideways in a fallover or slide event, and you are a person of a mass of 180lbs or more, then even in the same test case the results may be very different--there is more energy involved in the collision. even moreso in the case of a head-on collision that ejects the rider forward for a head-on impact with something (car, pavement, etc). that extra collision energy could be more than sufficient to split the helmet casing or completely crush the impact absorption material and still have enough to continue pushing the rider's head into the impacting surface and break the skull or worse.
so whether the "ebike" helmet standard is "better" than regular bicycle helmet standards is relative to the kind of crash and other conditions at the time, vs the test standards themselves.
that doesn't even include whether or not the manufacturer in question actually performed the testing the same way as specified (or at all), assuming it is something left up to the manufacturer to test and is not done by the same lab that developed the standard. or whether the manufacturer continues to produce the helmets themselves in accordance with the prototypes that were tested.
pessimistic i may sound...but iv'e beta tested assorted things (mostly software) over the years, and there are always conditions that aren't tested for that happen quite often in actual use. sometimes those conditions and the failure results at the time are catastrophic, sometimes they are benign or inconsequential. but you won't know till it happens.
most likely, helmets made to the "higher" standard of ebike use would be at least a bit better than regular bicycle helmets. but you'd have to put both kinds thru the same crash test conditions and see what the results are, to know "for sure".
