How to Properly Wear a Motorcycle Helmet

Buying the right helmet is the part everyone researches. Wearing it correctly is the part almost nobody does, and it is free. A helmet that sits too far back, or hangs off a loose strap, or has a chin curtain wedged wrong, can come off your head in the first tenth of a second of a crash — and a helmet on the road beside you is a helmet doing nothing. Every certification on the sticker, DOT, ECE 22.06 or Snell, is tested with the helmet properly fastened. The test conditions are the wearing instructions.

Before anything: is it the right helmet in the first place?

You cannot wear a wrong-sized helmet correctly. If the shell rocks, if there is a gap at the temples, or if you can rotate it noticeably on your head, no amount of strap technique fixes that. Measure your head and check the size against the maker's chart with our helmet sizing guide, and confirm the internal shape suits your skull with our head-shape guide. What follows assumes a helmet that already fits.

Putting it on without fighting it

A correctly sized full-face helmet is supposed to be tight going on — the opening is narrower than the widest part of your head, which is exactly what stops it coming off later. The technique is to grab the chin straps, one in each hand, and pull outward and slightly down to spread the opening, then roll the helmet forward over your head from the back rather than dropping it straight down. Your ears will fold; reach in and flatten them afterwards rather than forcing them through. If the helmet slides on easily with no resistance at all, it is almost certainly too big.

Where the helmet should sit

Once it is on, check the position before you touch the strap. The bottom edge of the brow should sit roughly one finger-width above your eyebrows — not perched high on your forehead like a hat, which is the single most common wearing error and leaves your forehead exposed in exactly the impact zone it is supposed to cover. The eye port should frame your vision with the top edge just out of your line of sight when you look straight ahead. The cheek pads should press your cheeks noticeably; on a new helmet they should feel almost too firm, because they compress with use. And the helmet should not be tipped back: a helmet worn like a bonnet loads the strap wrongly and can rotate off.

Fastening the chin strap: the two-finger rule

Almost every certified helmet uses a double-D ring. Thread the strap through both rings, back through the outer ring only, and pull it snug. It should be tight enough that you can just slide one or two fingers between the strap and your throat and no more; open your mouth wide and you should feel the strap pull against your jaw. If you can fit a whole hand under it, it is loose. If it is uncomfortable to swallow, it is too tight.

Then deal with the tail. The loose end of the strap has a snap or a keeper on it — use it. A flapping strap end at 70 mph is a genuine irritation and, on some helmets, a route for the strap to work loose. A micrometric ratchet buckle, common on modular and touring lids, is used the same way: set the strap length once so the ratchet closes snug, then use the ratchet for daily on and off.

The two checks that take ten seconds

With the strap fastened, do these every time until they become reflex.

The roll-off test. Reach behind the helmet, grab the lower rear edge and try to roll it forward off your head. Then grab the chin bar and try to rotate it backward. The helmet should stay put. If it rolls off, or nearly does, the helmet is too big or the strap is too loose — and that is precisely how helmets end up in the road next to riders.

The shake test. With the strap done up, grip the helmet and move it side to side and up and down. Your skin should move with the helmet — your cheeks and forehead should shift, not the shell sliding over them. Independent movement of the helmet on your head means it is too loose, however good the strap feels.

The mistakes riders actually make

Riding with the strap undone or clipped to itself. The most dangerous and most common. An unfastened helmet leaves your head in the first fraction of a second. The strap through only one D-ring. It will slip under load; thread both, every time. Wearing it too far back. Comfortable, and it exposes your forehead. Sizing up because the cheeks feel tight. New cheek pads are meant to be firm and will break in — our break-in guide covers what settles and what does not. Hanging the helmet on a mirror or bar end. That dents the EPS liner where you cannot see it. Leaving the chin curtain or breath guard out of position, which lets in noise and lets fog build on the shield.

Glasses, hair, earplugs and comms

Put glasses on after the helmet, sliding the arms into the channel between the cheek pad and the shell — forcing them on beforehand bends frames and drags them across your face. Helmets with dedicated glasses channels make this far easier; our best helmets for glasses ranking covers those. Long hair should go into a low, flat style or a helmet-friendly wrap; a high bun changes where the helmet sits and pushes it forward or back. Put earplugsin before the helmet, not after, and roll them properly so they seat — our earplug ranking explains what the number on the package does and does not promise. If you run an intercom, position the speakers over your ear canals before you buckle up — our intercom install guide covers placement, and a speaker pressing on your ear is a two-hour headache waiting to happen.

Taking it off without wrecking it

Undo the strap fully — do not try to wriggle out of a fastened helmet, which stretches the strap and drags the liner. Grab the chin straps, spread the opening outward, and roll the helmet backward off your head, folding your ears as it passes. Then put it down on a flat surface with the opening facing up, or on a proper shelf or helmet stand. Never leave it on a fuel tank, where it can roll off, and never on a hot exhaust. How you store it between rides matters too, and cleaning it properly keeps the liner doing its job.

Wear it every ride, on every ride

The last part of wearing a helmet correctly is wearing it at all — including on the two-minute trip to the shop, which is exactly the kind of low-speed local ride where a large share of crashes happen. A correctly fastened, correctly positioned helmet is the single highest-value thing you do before moving off, it takes about fifteen seconds, and it is the foundation of the whole ATGATT approach to gear. And when the helmet has done its job once, or reached the end of its life, replace it — our how long helmets last guide covers when.