# Met Parachute - sliced my chin



## peligro (Nov 3, 2005)

Hi all, since the met parachute is still generating some discussion, I'm posting my experience...hope this helps someone.

Had a low-speed endo on a steep step-down (this is exactly the reason I got the helmet) fell on my face and got a deep gouge in my chin from the exposed plastic ridges. Took 20 stitches to close, we'll see how it heals up.

I'm not sure whether I'll use the helmet again, but if I do I am going to add some padding to cover the exposed plastic ridges and make sure to keep the chinstrap VERY SNUG at all times. When I crashed I had the chinstrap as I would with a normal helmet, and this wasn't tight enough to prevent my chin smacking the chinbar. 

This was stupidity on my part, its obvious that the helmet can't protect you without a tight chinstrap, but it loosened up over the course of the ride and I wasn't paying attention to keeping it tight, easy mistake when you are fatigued.

Its hard to say whether the helmet made my crash WORSE (at least my teeth aren't screwed up) but it certainly didn't help.

My lesson from this is DO NOT wear the parachute unless you keep the chinstrap VERY snug. I personally will never use mine again without padding to cover up the plastic edges, I cannot imagine why Met don't do this.


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## HOV (Apr 16, 2012)

Can you post a picture indicating the surface that cut you?


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## Buzz (Jan 15, 2004)

I thought people would have learned their lesson from the Giro Switchblade from 10 years ago. Countless stories of people having their face sliced open by the chin guard when it fails on impact. Pseudo full face helmets like the Met Parachute (and the former Giro Switchblade) are more likely to injure you in a crash than actually protect you from what I have seen (first hand).


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## mykel (Jul 31, 2006)

Unsure of this...
If you hit hard enough to contact the chin-bar then I'm thinking that without the chin-bar you may have needed some serious dental work instead of some stitches...
So regardless of the strap and shift issue, could it be that it did help, although not as much as possible because of the loose strap?

just thinking out loud.

Healing vibes dude.

michael


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## peligro (Nov 3, 2005)

My upper lip got cut on the top inner edge, my chin got sliced deeply by the plastic ridges around the bolts in the middle.

In this case, because the crash was on soft dirt I would have been better off with no faceguard at all. Had there been padding on the faceguard I would have had no injury at all, maybe light abrasions.

Really my concern is my teeth, which I trashed a long time ago and have a bunch of expensive dental work to protect.


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