Praise the pinlock!

I bought a new crash helmet last week, and it has one significant advantage over my old one – the visor doesn't steam up AT ALL.

It's a Nolan N103 and while it is packed with groovy features – like a flip-down sun visor, space for the installation of a Bluetooth system, flip face – what I have to tell anyone who cares, and indeed those of you who don't, is that if you don't have one already, get a pinlock attachment for your helmet immediately if not sooner.

It comes fitted as standard in the N103, but you can buy them separately for other helmets. I didn't believe that it would work and I have no idea how it works, but no matter what the temperature, no matter how heavily I breathe, I can't get the visor to steam up.

My old helmet – decommissioned after one of West Yorkshire's legion of uninsured drivers knocked me over and sped away back in November – forced me to practice yogic breathing while driving.

It was of Japanese manufacture, and so perhaps the focus on remaining calm at all times was a deliberate feature. It certainly made you hold your nerve when speeding up or increasing the depth of your breathing immediately resulted in zero visibility.

Rather than risk death by concentrating exclusively on my breathing rather than the road ahead, I generally rode around with the visor up – in rain, in snow, whatever. I'd put it down when I was eventually blinded by the elements, and put it up again when I was blinded by my own breath.

I just rode in to Leeds for the first time in my new helmet and it blew me away.

OK, the sun visor steamed up when I put that down, because it's not double-glazed like the front visor.

And ok, there is an advantage in having your visor up for a good proportion of your journey time, because while the pinlock stops the visor steaming up, it does not stop the atmosphere inside quickly becoming like the depths of a tropical rainforest.

A rainforest that smells of one's own morning breath, I might add. I still have to open the visor from time to time to dry my face off.

But it's a small price to pay, particularly as I like the wind in my face. And the rain, and the snow, and the fumes, and the gravel. If you value my opinion and you ride any kind of motorbike (a vanishing small segment of the population, I appreciate), get yourself a helmet with a pinlock TODAY.