
Momentum: A Motorsports Podcast
Stories and strategies that keep the world of motorsports moving forward with host Heather Wilson Schiltz of High Gear Success | Weekly episodes drop on Thursday | Interviews with riders/drivers, motorsports event organizers, industry professionals and beyond.
Momentum: A Motorsports Podcast
EP5: Improving Rider Safety - Bob Weber, 6D Helmets Co-Founder & CEO
Bob Weber, Co-Founder and CEO of 6D Helmets, joins host Heather Wilson Schiltz for a deep dive into motorcycle rider safety, education and helmet innovation. Bob shares his insights on what makes a safer helmet and why rotational energy management is critical.
đ§ What Youâll Hear in This Episode:
- The origin story of 6D Helmets and the creation of its ODS technology
- Why some traditional helmet standards may no longer reflect real-world crash scenarios
- The difference between budget helmets and premium designs
- Pros and cons of buckles vs. D-rings in helmet straps
- How 6Dâs rebuildable helmet liner helps riders save money and stay protected
- The challenges of concussion prevention and why rotational energy matters
- Why youth rider education and proper chest protection are more important than ever
- A sneak peek at 6Dâs upcoming adventure and mountain bike helmet releases
- The story behind 6Dâs memorial ride honoring co-founder Robert Reisinger
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đ Learn more: 6Dhelmets.com
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Welcome to Momentum, a motorsports podcast powered by High Gear Success. I'm your host, Heather Wilson Schiltz. Here we share the stories and strategies to keep the world of motorsports moving forward. And joining me today is Bob Weber, the co-founder and CEO of 6D Helmets. Thanks for joining us. ah Thank you. It's nice to be here today. So a lot of people that work in the industry don't necessarily get the free time to go out and enjoy riding as much. So have you been able to get away from the office this summer at all? And what's your bikes that you're currently riding? oh Yeah, I try to stay active with it. I'm uh not as much on my motorcycle as I'd like uh lately. I've just been busy with uh my responsibilities here. ah But I also have an e-bike that I try to ride at least once a week and hopefully more. So I'm pretty good at least getting out on that once or twice. ah I have been on the motocross bike a little bit here lately. In fact, I just raced this past weekend for the first time in a long time. I'm doing a little bit of product testing and evaluation and just trying to get out there and be a little bit more involved with it. So all that's good. I have a brand new CRF 450 and just looking forward to getting that set up for myself and riding it a little bit more than I have been. Yeah. Where did you go racing at? I was at Glen Helen the Saturday at the Glen Race. It's just local fun stuff. I like the course out there and the people and they always do a good job. Yeah. When I lived in California, I don't know, it's probably been going on, you know, 10, 15 years ago now. they had, Oh, day in the dirt was out there. So I had gone to that and borrowed a bike, um, from work. And I really had not been riding very much of the time I had like, you know, at late high school, early college was busy with school and, took a bike out there. Definitely had no business being on that track whatsoever. Like. The hill I don't even know if it has a name but my goodness terrifying terrifying so I like it out there. They do a good job. It's all, you know, safe and, you know, mostly natural jumps and obstacles and stuff. And ah some of the jumpier tracks today, I'm a little bit past that at my stage. And so don't like the big doubles or triples or whatever anymore. But I still like riding. And it's my favorite thing to do is be on the motocross track. So you co-founded 6D in 2011, which has motocross, street, and bicycle helmets now. But what drew you to engineering helmets specifically? Um, I just had some knowledge of what I felt helmets were not doing, um, to the benefit of the athlete or person in an accident. And I thought we could do better, um, by, infusing some forward thinking technology into the helmet design and, started working on those concepts and, and kind of sussing out a solution and, came up with something that I thought would work and figured I need to get an engineer involved to help me get it over the finish line. And that's where I got in touch with Robert Reisinger, who was my founding partner. And we worked on it together for many years, two years in development and testing and evaluation and all of that. And then got it going and into market by 2013. So the name 6D is a reference to the engineering term six degrees of freedom. Can you kind of explain that in a little bit more detail? Yeah, basically our technology, our dual liner system is suspended and it allows that inside liner of the helmet to displace in ah six degrees of freedom. So it can, you know, compress and shear and modulate in its environment. ah Just like an airplane has in flight, it's at six degrees of freedom. and ability to move that way. And uh as we were trying to come up with a name for our company, um these days that's pretty hard because everything's taken and 6D was better than Bob and Robert's excellent helmet company. Yeah, I feel like when it comes to helmets and engineering too, there are so many different terms and acronyms that sometimes it gets really complicated to even explain what's going on. Like, you know, I just want to know that my helmet is going to protect me, but there's obviously a lot of technology behind it. So when it comes to regulations of helmets, are there any current safety standards that you feel like are outdated or sort of limiting? I feel like maybe the standards I mean, the tried and true, the DOT standard. But then there's obviously standards beyond that. So have you seen that change or do you feel like they're a little behind the times? That's a big topic. We could probably talk about that for a couple hours just in its own right. ah In the beginning, we did not subscribe to the Snell standard, and we still don't. We don't need to today. And at the time, it was a voluntary standard that, in our opinion, caused the helmet manufacturer to make a helmet that was uh stiffer or stronger than it needed to be from the shell perspective. And uh it had some unrealistic requirements for motorcycle type accidents. Maybe made some good sense in the automobile situation, but two strikes at high velocity in the same location on the shell is unrealistic on a motorcycle crash scenario. So we've always supported or certified our helmets to the ECE, the European standard and the US DOT, which is required to be on a public street or road in the United States anyways. The DOT standard complemented the ECE standard at the time, the ECE 2205, because it required the helmet to have a stronger shell, a more durable shell than the ECE side of the equation. There's a penetration requirement there that the ECE standard didn't have. it just, I think the balance of those two standards was a good mix for safety and protecting the athlete. Since the start of the company in 2011, Those standards have evolved. The ECE 2205 has evolved to become the ECE 2206. With that standard, they added a rotational component to the testing and a low energy component to the testing, which was a good thing. I think that low energy component is something that was brought to the surface by the innovation of our ODS technology. our efforts to make the helmet more capable over a broader range of energy demands. So it's working at low energy scenarios as well as the high energy impacts that somebody might experience in a severe accident. think about 2016, the FIM started sniffing around on helmet standards and wanted to try to develop something that they believed would be better for the road racing community in Europe. That's been a heck of a process. They're now on the FIMO2 standard. It's mandatory for off-road competition in Europe and any FIM sanctioned events as of January of 2026. We have certified our new ATR3s to that standard. Currently we're one of only two helmets that has passed the FIMO2 homologation protocol. So I'm sure everybody else is busy trying to get that done, but they basically have to be done by January because racing will start in Europe next year and sanctioned events and they have to have a qualified helmet or a homologated helmet for that. So anyways, yeah, long story short, the standards are improving because now we've offered or we're required to address the rotational situation, which our technology does excellently. And also this low energy component, was neither of those were ever part of the standards before. So they're improving actually. So teaching motorcycle safety classes, I get this question a lot from my students about what's the difference between a $100, $200 helmet versus a $800 helmet. Do you find that there are, even with your brand or other brands, is it mostly a safety difference? Is it a comfort difference? Is it a look difference? That's a really good question because some of the inexpensive helmets out there in the marketplace, they've passed the standard also, you know, and so they would provide you a level of safety similar to, you know, something that the higher end helmets, more expensive helmets offer in those types of accidents for sure. I think what that comes down to is the quality of the product. the type of manufacturing that it went through. Is it a polycarbonate injection molded plastic shell or is it a layup of uh a composite carbon or fiberglass material or combination of all those different materials to make a lighter, stronger, more durable shell. Some of the polycarbonate stuff is really sensitive to temperature. So there's some challenges there at times. It just comes down to features, quality, yeah, and safety for sure also, you know, because on some of those inexpensive helmets, you might have a chin strap rivet that, or a chin strap material that's not at the quality level of something from the other, from a quality manufacturer. The last thing you want to see is that the thing comes off or unravels after a few months of use or something like that. So anyways, yeah, it's just, know, buyer beware basically at the brand level and the quality level. you're not going to see a technology helmet like ours or some of the competitive helmets with creative technology solutions inside at a low price point. You're just not going to get those benefits. Mm-hmm. Have you seen the helmets that have like a I don't even know how to describe it, but it's like a clip Instead of a traditional D ring fastener. I don't even know what that's called I'm seeing a lot of that again in the street bike classes that I teach students that come with those I haven't really done any research into them obviously they're passing safety standards, but like if they're as reliable or Well, that's another really good topic. And I can tell you right now, we'll never put one of those types of clasp on one of our competition helmets or helmets that is used for competition. The D-ring is not going to come apart. If it's properly fastened, it's staying on the rider's head. After this amount of time in the industry and with helmets in the marketplace, we've seen all kinds of accidents. you just never know what's going to happen. And last thing you want to have is the potential for some kind of a tire, lever, handlebar grip, know, whatever, somehow modulate that magnetic clip so that it could come undone in an accident. So we just won't take that risk now. I know for a fact, riders like the convenience of that. We put them on our bicycle helmets. You know, in a bicycle helmet, we don't feel that the risk is the same. But in a motorcycle related incidents, you just don't know. And so we'd just rather be safe than sorry. D-rings work. They're not that hard to get on and off. And in my opinion, if you're racing with in a competition event with a helmet with a magnetic closure, and there are some certified ones that are passing the standards these days, I still think that's a foolish decision. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, I obviously the D-ring isn't hard once you understand how to use it. It is something that I have to teach a lot of my students how to use when they first come to class and sure the other ones seem easier, but I've also seen a lot of the other ones that aren't properly fitted underneath their chin. So the D-ring you're pulling it tight, you know, it's easy to adjust for the other ones. I'm spending a lot of time now before we start riding trying to work with these students and get their helmet straps adjusted. so it fits properly and the clip isn't just like hanging this fabric underneath their chin. So it's just something interesting that I've been seeing and I was curious if you had any dealings or research with that because it's definitely becoming more popular, at least on the street side of things. Yeah, I think you're smart to avoid those. Certainly for off-road competition or street competition, even on a street motorcycle, you just never know what's happening in an accident and you don't want the helmet coming off. So reduce that risk by not having one of those. So the ATR3 and the ATR3Y helmets, how do you structure the names of the different models of helmets? it's funny, know, and I kind of looking back, don't know, know, nomenclature is a funny thing. You know, we were trying to think, okay, well, what do we call our model helmet? You know, it's going to be advanced technology, AT, and then it's going to be race or it's going to be street or it's going to be bike or it's going to be, whatever. So we had this ATB, ATR, ATS, you know, kind of prefix to everything. On our most recent mountain bike helmet, we got away from that. We've just introduced a new Enduro mountain bike helmet to that community and we've just given it a name. It's the Alterra. And I don't know that we'll go away from it on the moto side. There's a lot of equity in that ATR prefix and the ATS prefix. then we've just kind of gone one, two, three, we're on the third generation of the motocross helmet after what, 14 years, I think, in business here. You know, so that's, it's just back in the beginning, it's kind of like 6D, you know, it's like, okay, what are we going to, how are we going to qualify these as models? You know, what are we going to name them? So we just kept kind of going back to the technology in both instances. Ever wish you had an expert in your corner to bounce podcasting ideas off of? Or maybe you're dreaming of launching a show, but don't know where to begin. Pedal Stomper Productions offers a free, no allegation, no pitch podcast consultation. I've worked with the owner, Josh, on a few projects. Plus he's a fellow motorcycle rider. He's not there to sell you anything. He simply wants to share his expertise and help you create the best possible podcast. Whether it's fine tuning your audio, Figuring out your video, strategizing your content, or understanding the first steps of launching, he'd love to connect. Sign up for your free consultation at pedalstomperproductions.com slash no pitch. That's one word. Again, that's pedalstomperproductions.com slash no pitch. Your resource for straightforward podcasting advice. Have you explored integrating digital technology or sensors in a helmet for impact? tracking. So there's probably a lot of testing that goes on in a lab, but have you ever looked at putting sensors in a helmet, either just for your own testing purposes or for riders to actually be able to know if their helmet is any good or not, if it's had an impact. Yeah, we have. In fact, we're working with a company in the UK right now exploring some of those systems and figuring out how to utilize them. And there's something that we want specific out of our solution, which I don't want to talk too much about, but because it's something we're working on and it'll be proprietary down the road. But because of our helmets design, we can do some things different with those types of sensors. capturing real-world data is important. It's one of the things that we talked about a lot in the very beginning. had a helmet, the threshold was seven and a half meters per second or 7.75 meters per second for Snell testing and you either passed or you failed. Your helmet had to meet the criteria that high velocity impact and if you did, you got a Snell sticker or a DOT sticker or an ECE sticker and you were good to go right on. Well, we started working and looking at testing down at the three meters is where we started three meters per second and then four meters per second and five meters per second and six meters per second and to see what the helmet was doing at all these different velocities, you know, so the real world athlete in the helmet, you know, okay, if you've got a sensor on the outside of the shell and it's located in the back of the helmet and you auger in on your forehead, You're going to get a reading. Is it an accurate reading on what the helmet happened up here and really transferred to the head? Probably not, but it's better than nothing. And what you can really get out of that is, okay, what kind of equivalent energy transfer did you have compared to a five meter per second or a six meter per second impact in the laboratory? That's what we want out of that. And so we're trying to work on how we can capture that. data at multiple different levels and multiple different locations on the helmet. As far as having a smart app that might tell me that, that might call a loved one that I had an accident or something like that, my watch does that, my phone does that. I don't know that I really need my helmet to do that. In some instances, I could see that good where you might not have your phone or your watch on you in that situation. But at the end of the day, We're looking more at the data side of what we can capture and learn out of that as opposed to, oh, an incident happened and this is what it showed us. So yeah, that's kind where we're coming from in that regard. What about if somebody, I feel like an off-road, it's a little different than street, but like if somebody is just holding their helmet and drops it, or like we tell our students again, don't set your helmets on the seat because they're going to fall off and hit the ground. And that impact, would imagine has at least some impact on the helmet's future performance. Yeah, that's an interesting question also. You certainly don't want to do that because, know, particularly in the pavement, you're going to paint job or your shell is going to be marked or damaged at some level. In most instances, as you know, and probably on the dirt side, you're not going to do a lot of damage there maybe, you know, because you don't have the mass of your head inside of the helmet. You know, you've got a three pound thing that's falling two and a half feet or three feet or whatever and then hitting the ground. You know, there's not a lot of force going on inside of the helmet to compress the EPS or anything. I think the worst case scenario on that is on some of the carbon shells. You might see a fracture or a crack if it hit right on the edge of a vent or something like that. You might get some damage that's like a super bummer, you know. We've had people whose bikes have fallen off the stand and they've had their helmet on the handlebar or something. and the clutch lever, the brake lever, you know, has poked a hole through the EPS liner and stuff, you know, and they're just like, oh shit, what do I do, you know? Those are always a bummer and, you know, fortunately on our ATRs, we can replace that inner EPS and get the helmet back to good for somebody in that situation. But, you know, in some other instances, that helmet might be in the garbage, have to go in the garbage can. Yeah, that's an expensive lesson for some people to learn. sure. Talk about kind of like the rebuilding aspect of your helmets. helmets are expensive and our helmet is a better mousetrap from an energy perspective. It does better work and provides better safety, but the helmet can be damaged in an accident where another brand helmet or another... design helmet may not be damaged because nothing happened to the EPS and the shell was so hard, it didn't participate in absorbing or managing energy. So in those situations, early on we had some customers that were upset because their helmet was torn up. They had a crash of moderate significance and impact and they were fine and... their helmet was damaged and needed to be replaced, you know, and they just spent a lot of money on a new 6D. So when we were engineering the second generation of our helmet, one of the goals was to make that EPS liner replaceable because that's what crushes first, the EPP liner is multi-impact, the shell if it's not damaged in the accident it can go on and live a second life and so it was important for us to be able to figure out how to do that. and we're the only manufacturer that does that. And it gives somebody the opportunity to get two or three significant impacts out of their helmet without concern and even more if the shell's not damaged. Although by the time it's been in for two or three major ones, it's usually worth it to just say, hey, that helmet's done its job. And it's time for a fresh one, dude. It might be three years old or whatever. But anyways, we monitor that closely and we track it and examine the helmet before we rebuild it. We don't allow our dealers to do that. It has to be done in-house. And it's just a service that we provide our customers that nobody else is doing at this time. Is there any correlation between if a rider gets a concussion, like the helmet is junk? mean, surely it's helped in some regard, and sometimes concussions are just going to happen. mean, would you say like, yeah, if you definitely have a concussion, that helmet's definitely done, it's damaged? Or is there still possibility that? You know, there could be a scenario where the helmet's not damaged and the rider has a concussion. In a highly rotational event, there may not be that much linear force put into the helmet where the helmet's destroyed or the EPS is ruined. In that situation, it's that rotational acceleration which is the change in velocity. The brain's moving and the head's moving at a speed and a velocity and it comes into impact. It impacts something and there's this massive acceleration and that acceleration is what does the damage in a concussion or a TBI or worse. So you might have a scenario where the helmet is not really compressed or damaged that much and the rider ends up with a concussion. And that's where it's so important that addressing this rotational acceleration, the technology, our ODS system allows that liner to shear and scrub off some of that where the shell is grabbing hold of whatever it's hitting. And instead of an immediate high rate of acceleration, there's a dampened transition into the inner liner following that. And we're talking milliseconds. So things happen pretty fast. But when you look at the acceleration curves of the graphs, you know, you'll see a traditional design that the line spikes almost vertically straight up. And when you look at that same curve on a 6D with our ODS technology, that line is a lot slacker and less severe because we're taking the same impact and we're spreading it over more time. And that reduces the extreme nature or the amount of force that's transferred. So it's really interesting. yeah, to answer that question, you could have a rider get a concussion and not have a dramatically torn up helmet. Interesting. When it comes to rider safety, what do you feel like some of the struggles are that our industry still faces? Is it an education issue? Is it a technology issue? Is it something else? You know, if we're talking about competition, which I think most of our customers are competitive racers at some level, motocross or off road and GNCC or whatever, um I think education is an issue. I think that a lot of the young kids coming up today maybe haven't been sat down by their mom or dad or coach and said, listen, You're progressing to the point of a lot of skill and speed on the racetrack. ah You're out there with 40 other kids. ah The risk is high and you need to ride aware of your surroundings and your abilities and what's happening in front and behind you as much as possible to not take unnecessary risks. So I do feel like there's an education component that needs to be discussed in a formal, sincere manner with these young riders. I grew up racing my whole life and I remember distinctly, I'll never forget it, I got run off a track by another rider and all I wanted to do was get back on the track and pay that guy back for what he did to me, you know? And at the time, I was young and dumb and that's what I wanted to do, you know? And those things go wrong. you know, in that instance, it could be irreversible harm, So I think there's an education component. I also feel like the equipment needs to be better. Body protection and head protection and neck protection are crucial. I lost my founding partner a year ago, little over a year ago to a broken neck. And, that was a terrible, terrible. time for everybody how do we protect the neck? You know, I've had a conversation with Gabrielle, you know, it's like at Alpinestars, you know, how do we better protect the neck? We can't blow an airbag out of the helmet. You can't explode that next to the head. there's issues there. You can't really blow it up out of the chest protector properly. so how can we better protect the neck? That is... The one thing I spend a lot of time thinking about right now is is there a better way for us to do that? Well, and with neck braces, again, there was, I mean, they're not necessarily new, but there is a lot of differing opinions on whether they hurt or help or, you know, the energy's gotta go somewhere. It's just transferring to a different place. Yeah, that's a really tough question because I think in some instances they're going to help and I think in some instances, they could potentially hurt you as well, know, it'd be part of the problem in an accident. So it's really tough to know what to do there. I think that the chest and body protector is really important. I know when I get on the track, I want to have my chest and my back protected. I wear the best protective gear that I can or that I believe in for that and that's what I choose to do. I'm not so worried about my biceps and my forearms and my elbows and as much as I am, my core and my back. Those are the things I really wanna have protected. And I don't know if it's changing now, but I feel like there was a period of time, somewhat recently, most of the people that I saw were not wearing chest protectors. It was like this thing. Like a long time ago, everybody wore them, and then there was just like this fad of not wearing chest protectors. So. I you, I've been that guy too. Back in the day, you're racing Southwick on a June Sunday and it's 95 degrees in humid out there. The last thing I wanted to do is put a chest protector on and there's no rocks at Southwick so you're not getting roosted and all of that. I wasn't thinking about another guy landing on me off of a jump or something like that or crashing and getting hit by somebody, but that happens. oh anymore, know, just like with age comes a little bit of wisdom and as I've aged, I'm in my early 60s now, you know, and I've been involved in motocross since I was a kid. I think differently about it when I go to the racetrack today, and I think it's important that these kids do and these families do. I feel like You know, a good chest protector should almost be mandatory, if not almost should be mandatory. that's tough to tell somebody what they have to, you know, we tell them they have to wear a helmet and boots, it's probably pretty smart to tell. think that AMA did pass a regulation in the last year or two where the youth are required to wear chest protectors, but it's not for everybody. The problem is you can't go back. have that accident and you've hurt yourself and you can't go back and had you made a different choice in equipment, maybe that could be different. Maybe the result or the outcome would be different. I think the tracks also could be safer in some regards. I believe some of the man-made obstacles create problems for unskilled riders. I really feel strongly that the 125 two stroke ought to be a class and you don't go from an 85 to a 250F. To me, that's way too big of a jump. You should go from an 85 to a 125 and then after a year or two on that 125 and you've grown and you've matured and developed into a young adult as opposed to a... maturing youth, then it's time to be able to get on a 250F and continue your career path. But not all of the manufacturers are making 125s right now, and there's not classes at all the tracks. And I do believe for the well-being of our sport and the well-being of these families that a 125 is a really important stepping stone from 85. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of factors like you just mentioned in the equipment and the bikes that people are riding or racing, the tracks, like you said, like the actual track layout, but then also like factors like flaggers is always a big topic that I hear about and being able to, divert people away from situations that have happened on the track or take care of somebody that needs the attention on the track. Yeah, I think there's a lot of factors that go into that. Yeah, I think, track safety, I'm not so concerned about speed. It's just the obstacles that get mixed in with that speed by tightening up some of the corners and, doing some things differently and slowing those down. Then you control it, at a higher level around the whole track. I think that's important. But, you know, part of that is going fast. it's fun as exhilarating and in the right environment, it's okay. I think, or in the right circumstances of the track design and such. But anyways, I think track safety can improve. I've seen the water truck parked next to the track before, or the bulldozer, and people have run off the track and hit that stuff. A promoter cannot allow that to happen. And I guess last but not least, while we're thinking about it is, I think the intercom is... Probably a pretty important device today. It's hard to have a flagger in every location and, you know, if the rider's coach or parent is on there and can constrain themselves from trying to talk the kid around the whole racetrack and keep it safety minded that, hey, there's a rider on the downside of the next jump, you know, slow down or go right or whatever. That could be a huge game changer right there. and we have the technology to do that. Yeah. Have you uh experimented with the different comms devices in your guys's helmets? Yeah, yeah, yeah. don't use one on the motocross track myself. I don't even talk to when I'm out there and probably don't want to either, although I wouldn't mind having a heads up that there's something on the blind side of that jump or whatever. But I do use them on my street motorcycle all the time. And they integrate into our helmets perfectly. We make room for speaker pockets. actually, our helmets are particularly easy to... thread it into because we have the two liners and some of the wires can just lay in between the liners with no problem. I think that technology is so good today it should be allowed to be used in competition. then each rider and mechanic or owner or team manager or whoever is going to talk to that rider on the track is going to have to be smart about it because in a lot of cases, the rider's not going want hear anything. He's going to, okay, tell me if somebody's closing on me, tell me what place I'm in and then shut up, unless there's an emergency. I think that's what then the rider can keep his mind focused on the activity at hand and not be distracted by, telling his dad to shut up because he didn't want to hear his dad telling him to go faster. Yeah, I definitely think the technology comes with like everything positive and negatives. So we have Cardos in our helmets and first we were using them for street. And like you said, it's nice just to be able to like have a heads up like, Hey, uh, we're turning right up here or, there's something on the road or yeah, I need to stop and get gas. And you're not trying to flag down the person ahead of you when you're behind and they're not looking in their mirror and you know, you need something. So, it's been positive in that regard, of course, like it can always be a distraction too. There's, the music element. people like to listen to music. I don't, I like to hear everything that's going on around me. And I realized like, you still can to some degree, but Part of like riding my street bike is like exploring the scenery and taking in the sights and sounds. so I like a quiet ride. That's funny, man. I'm uh out on my mountain bike and some guy's coming by with his tunes blaring on his mountain bike out to everybody. I'm just like, dude, get a life. mean, can't you leave it alone for an hour? You can listen to that wherever and whenever you want. You probably got it on all day long. You're out here enjoying nature and getting some physical activity. Can you just leave it alone? uh I agree with you, I personally would rather be with my own thoughts and stuff when I'm... Yeah. what is next on the horizon for product announcements whether it's moto helmets or bicycle helmets? do already we have a solution coming for the adventure market which I know you're interested to see. Yes, I'm very excited to see. That'll be here this fall and we've turned left a little bit on that maybe compared to the rest of the industry. So I'm excited to show that when the time is due. And I think we'll be fairly innovative with what we've done there to hopefully provide a better solution for a vast majority of the dual sport and adventure type riders, off-road guys that are really taking their bikes off-road. Maybe the BMW 1300 guy that spends most of his miles on the street might not choose our solution. I don't know. Maybe he will. If he's more into off-road and really takes it there, I think he will. But our solution is, think, going to be pretty cool and definitely different than what's in the marketplace for those riders. So that's coming in September or October. We're in the final throes of just getting everything tooled and done and ready to go into production soon and all the testing and homologation, all that fun stuff. We've got a new mountain bike helmet, which I mentioned previously. And then there's another one coming for downhill and mountain bike downhill and BMX. That will also arrive in September with our 2026 collection of stuff. And that helmet is going to be pretty exciting. I feel like there is getting to be more and more crossover between the disciplines as well. started, I started noticing years ago, like moto guys wanting to cross train with mountain biking, but I just feel like there's just a lot more even casual riders that just enjoy doing both. Yeah, no, I mean, I just enjoy being on two wheels and the bicycle side of it, you know, brings the fitness that, we're supposed to anyways, if I was a little better about it, but you know, that I need to ride on the moto side of things, but I think that, we've, we've had an experience over the last couple of years with the rider. Series in in Europe that has been really interesting Reese Wilson was factory Trek For many years and had a lot of concussions and He just he got to the point where he's basically said I'm not wearing that team sponsored helmet anymore. I'm wearing a 6D and you can fire me if you want. And of course that didn't sit too well with the team sponsors or whatever, but they finally kind of said, okay, you can do that. And last year they painted a 6D and he raced in it. And that was pretty cool for us just because he did his homework and he figured out what the safest solution was. And, you know, and. from what he could figure. And of course we agree with that. So it's been a lot of fun. I believe we're generally perceived as having the best safety solution out there from a technology standpoint, and that's the ODS system that's in all of our helmets. we have 11 patents today surrounding that design. And we've managed to keep everybody else out of our space. And we just work real hard to make an excellent product. we were... Robert and I were kind of the guys that said, there's a better way to do this. And that ODS system is what came out of that and figuring out how to manufacture that and how to design it to work. And the proof was in the pudding when we went to do the testing. And it's just been really fun to get that into other avenues of sport and into other elements and to continue to develop the company around that. You're also organizing a memorial ride for Robert coming up this year as well. So tell us about that and how that's coming about. Yeah, well, it'll be the second annual one. The first one last year was at Glen Helen right before the vet race, the World Vet Championships. And this one will be the same except at Perris Raceway. And the facility out there will allow us to do the training a little bit differently than what we were able to do with Glen Helen. basically the program is to come out and be trained by some professional athletes for rider technique on starts, corners, jumps, know, downhills, uphills, all that stuff. And we'll have some professional athletes that will do the training and we'll have a bunch of vendors that come out and there'll be an open ride session if you want to just come out and participate and ride with the track. But they'll all be in, to raise uh money for a scholarship and, just to help with the expenses of Roberts end of life. situation and everything and while we hate to be doing this at all, you know, we want to keep his legacy alive. He contributed a lot to the bicycle and the motorcycle industry as an engineer and in many facets of both sports and just, hated that he's not here with us any longer Yeah. Well, I hope that event goes really well and I appreciate all of your efforts and continuing helmet technology and rider safety in general. So let people know where they can connect with you online or connect with the 6D brand. That's super simple. It's 6Dhelmets.com. everything is there about our company and some information on the tech and the product lines available there and everything else. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for tuning into Momentum. This has been a production of High Gear Success. If you want to connect or recommend a guest, head to MomentumMotorsportsPodcast.com. Until next time, keep the momentum rolling.