Catastrophic Full-Face Helmet Failure!

Total equipment failure, that absolutely should not happen in a “dh rated” helmet. Crazy that it broke mid chin bar too, not even at the connection point where I’ve seen some issues on other helmets. That blood on the visor is freakin gnarly.

Judging by the scratch on the forehead of your helmet and the chin bar breaking, you impacted directly to your face pretty hard. Just because it was 'slow speed' and you didn't hurt anything else doesn't necessarily tell the whole story. 

Did you make contact with your face first and nothing else? What contacted your face? Did you hit a rock or tree? You clearly hit your chin bar and helmet on something or it wouldn't have broken. I'm guessing your face would've looked worse if you hadn't had that on.

Not saying there wasn't a potential issue with how the helmet behaved, but there needs to be a lot more context to make a statement either way.

That sucks, dude. Losing teeth is the worst. To answer your question, yes chin guards on helmets absolutely break from time to time, but the anecdotal evidence I've seen and heard says that it happens a lot more often on these lightweight, ventilated, or convertible "enduro" full face helmets, like your Bell Super DH. Personally I would only ever ride a real, heavy, dedicated full face helmet because I like my teeth and because my rough understanding of physics tells me that more padding and structure = more weight = more protection which is the whole point of wearing a full face.

Talk about testing the new equipment out! Sheesh.

My opinion is that you hit your face hard enough where those teeth were definitely going either way.

Losing teeth is the worst, my kid kicked one right out of my head some years back. $9K & 9 months later I'm good as new...

holy crap, that's brutal! glad you're sort of ok. sheesh!

re: DH helmet standard - i feel like that standard may provide false hope, as chin bar/full face has very little to do w/ the standard. facts/figures at URL below, but here's a paragraph from there (IMO, 11 pounds from a little more than a one-foot drop isn't a whole lot of force for the chin bar...not sure if it includes any kind of lateral testing on it or if it's just straight on)

Full-face not required.
While the vast majority of downhill helmets are of the “full face” variety, meaning they feature a chin bar, F 1952 doesn’t actually require that passing helmets possess a chin bar. If, however, the manufacturer has equipped the helmet with a chin bar, that portion of the helmet must withstand an impact test (a 5-kilogram weight dropped on the chin bar from a height of .40 meters) without deflecting more than 60 millimeters.

https://www.helmetfacts.com/standards/astm-f1952/

I like what he's saying.

That is awful. So sorry that happened. A failure like that is odd. How/what did the helmet hit? Like which direction? (I know most of the time one doesn't know, cause it happens so fast, that true for most of my crashes anyway). It looks like the chin bar was hit from the top with a downward force (with helmet level) Which I'm guessing was from super man over the bars traveling horizontally and hitting top of chin bar on a rock or something similarly immovable. A hit like that could put the chin bar in bending, not compression. Note the top of chin bar separated, but the bottom is still attached by a thread. As spomer said, standard tests are for head-on hits, i.e. you run straight into a wall. This would put a compressive force on the front of the chin bar. A vertical hit to top of chin bar is less common and they may have prioritized head on hits to save weight on other crash scenarios. Like robot said, light weight ff helmets are not the same as full fat ones. The tests for certifications are imperfect at best, so don't put too much stock in them. Still... if you'd had an open face helmet on could have been way, way worse. 

Edit: Wait! 5kg from 0.40M??? I miss read .40M as 4.0 meters. That standard is not very reassuring. 

I guess I look at this slightly differently.  That is the point of those type helmets. More protection not the ultimate protection but more protection for the in between times.  I would guess that no chin bar and damage would have been much worse.  

Who knows? Perhaps your helmet did its job and self-destructed to absorb the energy of the crash. You have a bloody lip and missing teeth instead of a broken jaw and facial reconstruction surgery. 

Heal up quick! 

I'm not convinced this helmet "did its job" by shattering like that....I would prefer it to stay in one piece even if the structure of the bar is broken, the same the shell of modern helmets stay together once its broken, instead of flying off in chunks. I'm honestly not sure if I would have preferred just hitting the ground with my bare face.....that kind of damage is scary! 

I wouldn’t say helmet failure. Imagine if you didn’t have that helmet on. Might have been worse.

I'd have to agree with this statement. A friend of mine that I ride with all the time and who crashes a descent amount has broken at least 3 of those "enduro full face helmets" over 2 seasons and once he got a TLD D4 helmet, he hasn't broken/exploded one of them in 2 years.

Might as well just go all out and get a full DH helmet since they are usually about the same price. Besides, bicycle technology is allowing us to go faster and faster these days and the protection needs to be able to keep up.