On the importance of riding with your visor down
As you’ve probably noticed, most two-wheeler riders like to ride with their visors “up”. Doing so facilitates a steady stream of air-flow when they are in motion. What we wanted to study was the potential downside of this approach.
We compared the difference in the amount of dust that one breathes into one’s lungs between keeping the visor up, and keeping it down. The experimental setup was very simple - the DUT (device under test) was a rider wearing an N95-class face-mask; in one case, he rode with the visor pulled-up on a full-face helmet - similar to a rider who doesn’t wear a helmet or uses an open-face helmet. In the other, the visor was held down. To prevent the rider from feeling suffocated or claustrophobic while riding with the visor down, BluSnap (our wearable cooler) was attached to the helmet in case (2). The test duration was 6 hours and the rider spent this time riding through Bangalore traffic which is par for the course in Jamalore, sorry, Bangalore. At the end of the tests, we compared the level of deposits on the N95-class face-masks.
As seen in Figure (1), it is clear that the mask is significantly cleaner (whiter) when the visor is held down. It is unsettling to note the deposits settled on the other face-mask - the open-visor rider - a helmet-less rider or open-face helmet user would only be exposed to more of this pollution.
Figure 1: Comparison between Visor-up (equivalent to no helmet or open-face helmet) and visor-down riding
So if you’re keeping your visor open or wearing an open-face helmet or none at all because you find it suffocating or claustrophobic, BluSnap is the perfect innovation for you. Our product is a sleek, light add-on to your full-face helmet that blows cool, comforting and clean air into your helmet while letting you keep the visor down. The positive pressure generated in the helmet also keeps the outside dust at bay and prevents fogging of the visor.
Protect your head with your helmet, protect your lungs with BluSnap.