Six-time WSBK world champion Jonathan Rea has been granted exclusive access to Arai's secret laboratory. He came to share the differences that Arai makes, whether on the track, on the street or in everyday life. The Northern Irish rider has worn Arai helmets for most of his career, and even during his biggest crashes, they saved his head from serious injury every time. He takes us to visit the Arai Inspiration Center, based in Europe.
Inside this testing center, the walls are covered in all kinds of bright and colorful Arai motorcycle helmets. However, it's only later in the video that you learn that all of these helmets were impacted and sent back to Arai so they could learn from those impacts.
At floor level there are three testing machines located towards the center of the room. As an Arai representative informs us, this is not where Arai conducts its certification testing. Instead, all headsets that participate in this process are sent to an independent testing center. Arai's on-site testing machines are intended to demonstrate how well Arai helmets protect your head for dealers, distributors and some exclusive guests, like Jonathan Rea who shows up to make a YouTube video.
Like other helmet manufacturers, Arai is understandably a little cagey about revealing its shell material composition process. What it's not afraid of, however, is showing you just how well its formula can protect your head. Jonathan Rea demonstrates this in a rather hilarious way by inviting someone to come and stand on his head while he is only wearing a helmet shell and lying on the ground. As we see, the weight of an average adult male does not seem to cause this shell to flex.
We also see some testing with the machines, including an ECE-compliant 28 km/h impact, as well as the penetration test. As the rep explained, Arai's helmet design philosophy is pretty simple: If you deflect an impact as much as possible, you don't have to worry as much about absorbing the effects of that impact.
