Let the chins fall where they may

I'm not sayin' y'all need to be wearin' no full-face or nuttin', I'm just sayin' it couldn't hurt.

It could, however, hurt a great deal if you don't.

When I went into Shenandoah Harley Davidson a couple weekends ago to teach a Rider's Edge class with Steve Davis, the head rental/school dude at the Staunton area establishment, he showed me this really cool, but frightening diagram. The diagram showed the impact points on a helmet most often struck FIRST in a get-off over in jolly old Europe.

This means that 19.4 percent of the time, the right chin takes the first hit.

Full face come in interesting designs

15.2 percent of the time, it's the left chin.

The left forehead gets it 8.2 percent of the time, the left forehead 10.1 percent and then it pretty much decreases as you go along.

That means a 3/4 helmet will be effective in 45.5 percent of the time, but miss out on 54.5 percent of impacts (chin plus face shields. If  you have no face brace, you have no face protection.)

If  you have a half-helmet, you're protected 28 .5 percent of the time and wide open 71.5 percent of the time (chin, face shields, lower half of the sides of the head and temples.)

If you have a beanie, well, don't worry about it.

Of course, the beautiful thing about riding is that  you get to take as much risk as you want. You can roll 110 mph on the Blue Ridge Parkway if you want (and don't get caught). You can roll with a beanie. You can roll with ATGATT or NoGATT, t-shirt, shorts and sandals or boots and leather.

It's your decision. How much risk are you willing to take?