Video: What An Injured Rider's Dreams Are Made Of

 @Airbud as someone in your career would you say that a full face helmet significantly reduces chances of brain injury or is it more about not having your face and teeth smeared down the trail.

 @patrick-marsh: if you think about it your face is your passport in all meetings in your life. Depends where you work off course but wound tattoos are not welcome everywhere. I recognize it in the looks of absolutely wonderful people at my work that they would rather not see my bloody scars, when I come bruised sometimes. They are great people, but still. Some dummies in this sport think it’s cool, they expect people to be respectful, some low lives expect even admiration and curiousity about their injuries. No, not really, your self proclaimed heroism is your own thing. And more often than not we crash in a silly manner, not when being 10s up on the final split on World Champs. So what reason is there to be proud of yourself? No one wants to see a gashing wound, especially on the face. Yes they can happen on a regular xc ride but they happen much more likely when maxing out strava times, when filming, riding in the bike park, shuttling. Dress up to the occasion, respect the people looking at you. You can tattoo “ass guy” on your bottocks, but don’t do it on your tyr... face.

As to the rider, heal up man, all the best, we all crash and some are less lucky, they crash harder. After all, riding skill is the best way to avoid injuries, and you are good at it.

*disclaimer: text above is not only for good looking people.

 @WAKIdesigns: I assume @patrick-marsh means the additional leverage on your neck that comes from the full-face's chin. Also, it was proven that helmet's size and weight increase the forces impacting your head and brain. One can argue that it's easier to replace several teeth than fix a broken spine cord, or suffer a serious TBI. Yes there are neck braces, but not sure it they solve the problem. @AirBud

 @Slabrung: not sure if assuming worst case scenarios is a good mental approach to anything in life. One can argue that wearing any helmet is increasing chance of brain trauma from rotational forces. Each person can educate themselves and feed that data to their own calculator of probability. I am personally sceptical about any greater moralizing. I am still traumatized from a story of a 40yr old dude who broke his spine and people were bashing him for wearing a soft back protector. Trouble was, as I realized it later after reading about Martyn Ashton crash, that he fell on his neck and it was a compression. No spine protector would save him. Hence, wear whatever you like. Just because you think you save your face doesn’t mean you will save your brain, and conversely, you may feel safer in open lid and one day you may need plastic surgery. If it happens by the time you are 20, especially if you are a girl? That cuts your pool of potential boyfriends by a lot. Nothing in life is simple

 @WAKIdesigns: yeah Waki but wearing a helmet also assumes a worst case scenario, i.e. crashing. We just need to go for the statistically best option. And here we don't know the statistics, and this I guess is the reason for Patrick's question to AirBud.
And I definitely agree that nothing in life is simple.

 @Slabrung: to me hitting my head into the ground/ tree is a scenario that I am sure will happen. Same with knees hitting the ground. But I am unable to prepare for life threatening crashes.

 @Slabrung: I was more thinking of direct impacts to the face and if they are effectively transfered to the brain, though I guess there is a significant natural crumple zone (jaw etc). But of course weight and leverage are also large factors so I'm interested in that to and the overall effect.

 @patrick-marsh: don’t forget that we use jaw for eating. It’s always about many factors, brain injury is one of them. Likelyhood of loosing teeth is much higher than increase of brain trauma due to hitting ground with the jaw piece. I fell at least 10 times on my face in fullface helmet. Front wheel going over the top of the berm twice, several front wheel wash outs on off camber and one fromt wheel case. Several cases of falling face straight on a rock in a rock garden with 2 actual hits. Then at least 3 dirt eating sessions in open face. Then I had 2 potential concussions.

 @patrick-marsh all impacts to the head are transferred to the brain, in fact you don't even need to hit your head to have brain injury (e.g. whiplash).

@WAKIdesigns in the discussion about full face I rather think about neck injury, not TBI. But I think I would wear a full face if I found one that fits me well.

 I cant upvote this enough.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Healing Vibes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 @colincolin: cheers bud! Feeling rather ropey!

 @cunning-linguist: ouch sounds not cool, heal up fast!

 @Slabrung: yeah, mind working slower than normal. Can’t wait to feel normal again :-( cheers dude!

 @cunning-linguist: not really a dude but I forgive you due to your head injury OK jokes aside I really wish you good recovery, I know how it feels and it's not fun.

 @Slabrung: thanks!! :-)