Shoei donates to MSF braking study

PowersportsBusinessSeptember 13, 2011

Shoei Safety Helmet Corp.’s support allowed the Motorcycle Safety Foundation to include braking instrumentation in its unprecedented, one-year-long MSF 100 Motorcyclists Naturalistic Study.

Designed to provide comprehensive, real-time, routine-riding, near-crash, pre-crash and actual-crash data that is currently unavailable, the study was launched earlier this month and is sponsored by MSF and administered by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. This groundbreaking research will track 100 participant-owned motorcycles for one year and approximately 500,000 total miles, and the braking data is a critical part of the overall study.

In June, the MSF received from Shoei a donation of 2,100 premium X-Twelve helmets with an MSRP of approximately $700 each. Those helmets were then offered to the MSF’s national rider training network for a nominal fee for use by both RiderCoaches and students during MSF RiderCourses. A portion of the proceeds provided a mid-five-figure investment that was used to fund the recently added braking portion of the MSF 100 Motorcyclists Naturalistic Study.

“Whether riders effectively brake in emergency situations is a persistent question in the motorcycling community,” said VTTI research scientist Shane McLaughlin. “There appears to be evidence that if riders brake, they more commonly use too much rear brake and too little front brake to get the most out of their motorcycle’s braking ability. We’ve equipped the participating motorcycles with sensors that monitor rider input to the front brake lever and foot brake, and this will provide the first-ever measures of how riders brake during real-world, short-reaction-time, critical maneuvers.”

“Shoei and the MSF share the same goal,” said Shoei President Hiro Mizushima. “That is to help protect motorcyclists. Shoei does this by developing the best head protection available and MSF does this with the best rider training curriculum and innovative research. We are pleased that the helmets we donated will be used in their rider training and also that the helmet donation resulted in such an important contribution to the MSF 100 Motorcyclists Naturalistic Study.”