Epic road rash on a motorcycle helmet

Saw this on another website I frequent, and I have to ask: Can this sort of damage really happen to a motorcycle helmet? It looks like a big chunk got hacked clean off!

It's plausable, especially when racing. That one indicates someone sliding on their back, head first, on concrete, for a long ways.

More likely though, imo, is someone played with a belt sander.

I believe it was a real world incident where the head was trapped under the bumper of a car. I recall seeing a pic a few years back.

Ah, a little googleing reveals quite a bit.

The story is this is the helmet of the guy who ran into a non-moving bus video's. Supposedly Jack Nicholson's grandson/nephew/etc. It most certainly is not that helmet. If for no other reason than the person ran into a non-moving bus. It also appears to be the wrong color.

A little more googleing shows multiple images of this same helmet, with various degrees of damage. Can't put a timeline to all the changes, but it's quite clear the damage has grown.

So, imo, this is faked damage. There may well have been some initial damage that may well have come from a crash. But what the above picture shows has been vastly improved upon, and more improvements were made later on since the picture.

Not to say wearing a helmet isn't a good thing.

Notice how perfect the demarcation line is. For the most part, no damage at all, even to the paint, and then a perfectly flat missing part like it was held up to a large sander. Faked.

there's a tiny bit of "road rash" at about 4 o'clock … but the main part does look faked

I think that it was strapped to the side of a bike that went down and went for a slide.

I've seen photos of helmets with holes worn in them after a crash, but that one looks too perfect - someone would have to fall in a very odd position, and then hold their head perfectly in the same position as they slid. I'm sure there are plenty of photos of real crash damage out there that could have been used instead. I kept the helmet I was wearing when I had my one big accident; it has some deep grooves in the temple from where I scraped my head on the pavement, that would have been in my skull if I hadn't been wearing it. It sits on a shelf in the garage above where I park my bike as a reminder of why wearing one is a good idea. However, while abrasion protection is important I think the main point of a helmet is impact resistance.

Thanks, guys. I was leaning toward this picture being faked, but since I'm a cager first and foremost I figured I would ask some folks with more experience.

Faked or not, if it convinces someone to were their lid, its valid.

When I was in high school a kid rolled his car onto its roof on the highway. He broke his arm which was flung out the window, but the real damage was to the top of his head which scraped along the highway for a few feet through the broken sunroof. He wore a hat after that.