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Helmet and lightning
- Thread starter TownsendsFJR1300
- Start date
jaronv74
New Member
But... how? The metal clasps on the chin strap?
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Wrong place at the wrong time... His time to "go"..
Tree's, usually hit, have no metal in them...
Tree's, usually hit, have no metal in them...
jaronv74
New Member
Unfortunately you're right..
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Your body is a good conductor of electricity. Lightning is of such high potential when it's ready, it takes the path of least resistance.
The report said the rider didn't survive after he lost control and crashed. If the lighting made the 2 holes in that helmet,he probably didn't die from the crash. If he was riding all that HD iron, he was probably an instant , "Hell's Angel"
The report said the rider didn't survive after he lost control and crashed. If the lighting made the 2 holes in that helmet,he probably didn't die from the crash. If he was riding all that HD iron, he was probably an instant , "Hell's Angel"
MattR302
Awesomeness, Inc.
Snell needs to start testing for that.
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Yeah... Your not stopping a bolt. It looks like the exit was the 2 vents. You can see some of the liner exited the vents and you would not want to see the inside of that helmet.
That was a direct hit.
I guarantee he never felt a thing except maybe a static field build up but it was over before any thought existed about it.
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Just to add to this there are cases of lightning strikes that are not direct hits from the main bolt that people survive. From what I understand this is a terribly painful experience that you'll never want to experience even if you're Johnny Knoxville from Jackass. 
Red Wazp
Super Member
Ouch.
When it's your time - it's your time.
When it's your time - it's your time.
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And when it's your time and you do something about..... Like get out of the storm. It's also your time....
bigborer
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It's not always that easy to get out of the storm.
Few weeks ago I took half a day off to ride the FZ6 in the nearest rural area near my city, where the traffic is light, the roads are good, it's moderately twisty and there's rarely police. Online weather said ~30% chance of rain.
There were very few and thin clouds and it was mostly sunny... until after some point, in about 20 minutes at most, the sky turned black in almost all directions. The moment I saw that I turned to the nearest highway entry point (10 minutes away), hoping to get home as quick as possible, before the storm started.
I was at about 80kms from home, and rode that highway as fast as safely possible for a naked bike and moderate wind (about 180km/h), hoping to outrun the storm. In about 10 minutes I started to feel some tingling on my biceps, one of the few vented areas on my leather jacket. 5 more minutes, and the tingling got more painful, so I slowed down to about 140km/h and noticed that what was causing me pain was hail (it took about 5 days for the bruising to heal!). After the short time it took to take a few peak looks at the hail, trying to spot the largest one sitting on the tank, it suddenly started pouring rain and lightning everywhere.
This was the closest I'd ever been to lightning, as one bolt struck an electricity post about 2-300m right in from of me. 2 minutes later, due to the rain and wind it took so much concentration just to ride at 60 km/h, that I couldn't even "admire" the lightnings near me any more.
And no, there are absolutely no gas stations or restaurants or anything that I know of in that area.
So yeah... sometimes it just is what it is, and all you can do is just ride it out, hoping that it's not your time yet.
Few weeks ago I took half a day off to ride the FZ6 in the nearest rural area near my city, where the traffic is light, the roads are good, it's moderately twisty and there's rarely police. Online weather said ~30% chance of rain.
There were very few and thin clouds and it was mostly sunny... until after some point, in about 20 minutes at most, the sky turned black in almost all directions. The moment I saw that I turned to the nearest highway entry point (10 minutes away), hoping to get home as quick as possible, before the storm started.
I was at about 80kms from home, and rode that highway as fast as safely possible for a naked bike and moderate wind (about 180km/h), hoping to outrun the storm. In about 10 minutes I started to feel some tingling on my biceps, one of the few vented areas on my leather jacket. 5 more minutes, and the tingling got more painful, so I slowed down to about 140km/h and noticed that what was causing me pain was hail (it took about 5 days for the bruising to heal!). After the short time it took to take a few peak looks at the hail, trying to spot the largest one sitting on the tank, it suddenly started pouring rain and lightning everywhere.
This was the closest I'd ever been to lightning, as one bolt struck an electricity post about 2-300m right in from of me. 2 minutes later, due to the rain and wind it took so much concentration just to ride at 60 km/h, that I couldn't even "admire" the lightnings near me any more.
And no, there are absolutely no gas stations or restaurants or anything that I know of in that area.
So yeah... sometimes it just is what it is, and all you can do is just ride it out, hoping that it's not your time yet.
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Florida IS the lightning capitol of the world..
I've seen it take out two palm trees across the canal from me (I was on the covered patio) and once, while working(had to be there), a bolt hit maybe 100' away.. Holy crap....
Being summer is the rainy season down here and with that comes daily thunder storms/lightning. If you can hear thunder, it's time to get inside, get under an overpass, etc... Fortunately, it usually blows past pretty quick.
I've seen it take out two palm trees across the canal from me (I was on the covered patio) and once, while working(had to be there), a bolt hit maybe 100' away.. Holy crap....
Being summer is the rainy season down here and with that comes daily thunder storms/lightning. If you can hear thunder, it's time to get inside, get under an overpass, etc... Fortunately, it usually blows past pretty quick.
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We rarely get thunder and lightning here but one day we had a group ride. We were on Old Hwy 94 headed east. The sky quickly turned dark ahead of us and we could see the lightning strikes ahead of us. We got the group turned around and knew we had to get away as quickly as possible. We huddled in an underpass and one of our riders was an AC130 flight engineer from our MCAS Marine Corps Air Station Miramar. (Remember Top Gun?) He had a cool doppler app on his phone and got us pointed west bound to head away from the storm. It was almost too late as there was a wall of black to our north and I could see bolts stretching from behind us and hitting ahead of us in the mountains just northwest of us. We couldn't go south because south was Mexico and we were almost at the border fence. All of us were in the triple digits because it was one of the worst storms and it came fast on us. There was no weighing a speeding ticket against a strike. I don't think CHP wouldn't understand what we were up to anyway. We all made it to safety.
Thank you Chris [MENTION=24548]Eng[/MENTION] for help getting us out of that? :rockon:
Oh yeah I have a doppler app now!
We have a member on our forum that is the survivor of a lighting strike.
My wife was in a phone booth on the phone when lightning hit near her location. She shot out of the booth and over a chain link fence she could never scale normally.
My kids went running away once when I hooked up some 8 foot florescent lamps to a long dipole antenna and grounded the other other ends of the bulbs. I told them look! That lightning bolt was about 1 mile away and look how bright these lamps get! Those strikes were inducing enough emf in that dipole antenna to light those florescent lamps. Of course I quickly grounded that dipole and got away fast....
Oh yeah....... Wanna know about how far a strike is from you? Sound travels at 1096 feet per second at sea level, about 70 deg F or rounded off, 1100 feet per second. When you see a strike, count, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand...... When you hear the sound, multiply the seconds times 1100 feet.
Thank you Chris [MENTION=24548]Eng[/MENTION] for help getting us out of that? :rockon:
Oh yeah I have a doppler app now!
We have a member on our forum that is the survivor of a lighting strike.
My wife was in a phone booth on the phone when lightning hit near her location. She shot out of the booth and over a chain link fence she could never scale normally.
My kids went running away once when I hooked up some 8 foot florescent lamps to a long dipole antenna and grounded the other other ends of the bulbs. I told them look! That lightning bolt was about 1 mile away and look how bright these lamps get!
Those strikes were inducing enough emf in that dipole antenna to light those florescent lamps. Of course I quickly grounded that dipole and got away fast....Oh yeah....... Wanna know about how far a strike is from you? Sound travels at 1096 feet per second at sea level, about 70 deg F or rounded off, 1100 feet per second. When you see a strike, count, one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand...... When you hear the sound, multiply the seconds times 1100 feet.
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