I haven't even bothered looking at the ratings. I'm lucky. I've seen the R&D departments at Shoei and Shark, I've seen what they do to test their lids (and I'm sure the other big brands are more or less the same).

Get this. There is NO chinbar test in the Sharp test. So an open-faced lid could, in theory, get a better rating than your full-face lid. How can you have confidence in a test protocol that failed to incorporate a chin bar test?

In addition, testing a lid at five specific points makes it easy for helmet manufacturers to build a lid to pass a test.

Why no penetration test? If my bike lands on my head I don't want a footpeg in my brain pan.

If your lid doesn't fit you properly then it really doesn't matter how many stars it got, does it? Did inspectors factor that in when they were analysing fatal head wounds?

I'm sure some good will come of the test, but I'm not changing anything. Yet.