In case your wondering if these bars will protect the plastic and radiator I layed this thing down to see what would happen. I notice with about a half tank of gas and the top bar acting as the fulcrum there will be about 10 lbs pressure on the end of the handle bars forcing down. which means if you lay the bike down there is a pretty serious chance it will slide on the plastic up top. Take a look.. I really like these bars though!!
Yeah, there was this long discussion on the Versys forum on the different schools of thought with respect to crash protection. I don't think you can really predict what is going to be damaged in an accident, there are to many variables. I went with the Hepco&Becker version: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=293250 Gustavo