I'll always wear a full-face on a motorcycle. One day I hit the ..not even asphalt..concrete..@74 mph. I had on a Bell full-face helmet and a pair of aqua Levi's shorts. And I guess some shoes or something. That's all, yikes.
They were uh..re-doing the bridge and had these cones set out, so I started slaloming them, got up to 74 and my dumbass should have known they wouldn't be all evenly spaced. So..one sucks up between the front wheel and frame, I get launched like Superman. Flew through the air for about 150 feet, somehow I look back and my bike did a perfect flip, landed on the tires, and fell over slow. That's when it started to get bad. I hit the road with my elbow and chin part of the full face on the initial impact, then proceeded to slide for a longggg ways, probably about 100 feet or so with a lot of ouch and turning. Ow ow ow ow ow! Turn turn turn turn turn. Ow! Ow ow ow ow!
So I stopped sliding and come to rest right at the feet of a State Trooper. Sonofabitch! I'm going to jail!
But no! He asks me if there's anyone I can call to come help me. Why hell yeah there is!
So I called my friend to come get me and he took me to the hospital to get stitched up and then I went home and got my truck and a friend to go help get my bike into the back of it and tie it down. And then I convalesced for a very painful 3 days.
I took a cheater bar and straightened my handlebar, and uh..I had to replace the rotor cover, and then I was riding again.
That didn't stop me from riding. Something else did.
The moral of the story: If I hadn't been wearing that full face, I wouldn't have a jaw, or face, probably. That's real.
Make your own helmet decisions, but I would highly suggest a full face.
I may not ever ride again; Something scared me years down the road from that. Was only going 35, too.
The above story could have gone wronger so many different ways. I could have hit the rail with my body and then bounced off with a 100 foot drop into the water right afterwards being all busted up and drowned. I got the best possible scenario for what happened. It's truly a miracle I'm still alive today at all.