You've really got to stop fighting this and buy motorcycle boots already. There was no car impact, no getting run over. The guy (his name is Aaron Kelly) simply instinctively put his foot down when he lost traction and his bike was going down. His foot caught and his weight, combined with the bike weight, snapped his ankle like a twig. Think about the forces of 500 pounds travelling instantly from 15mph to zero and put that on one ankle at an awkward ankle, and you can see how it could snap.
This is exactly why sport or work boots won't cut it. Good work boots can help with abrasion resistance, but they simply aren't designed for the job of protecting your foot and ankle in a motorcycle accident. Steel-toed boots were developed to keep toes from getting directly crushed from above. The impacts associated with motorcycle accidents generally cause blunt force trauma unlike damage caused by sharp and heavy object impacts that steel toes are designed to protect against. So motorcycle boots are designed to provide padding to spread-out the impact loads rather than deflect them.
Put another way, reputable gear manufacturers design for the specific risk of injury you will face. They have years of experience designing boots based on actual damage they see to their boots from a large number of accidents, so over time, designs have evolved to provide the greatest protection for the largest number and variety of accidents while preserving essential feel, flexibility and foot range-of-motion. For example, BMW develops their motorcycle boots with the Centre for Orthopedics and Accident Surgery in San Moritz, Switzerland (experts in ankle injuries from ski accidents) to make sure their boots work well. Gaerne worked with bio-mechanical engineers to develop its "floating system" to protect the ankle from torsion breaks in a crash like Aaron's.
And, if you still aren't convinced, there have been studies on this. Statistically speaking, you want to protect your feet if you consider the frequency of motorcycle accident injuries and the disabilities caused by each type of injury. Almost one in four rider casualties injure their ankles (23%) and over 80% injure their legs, ankles or feet. (Otte, 1987.) Two out every three of the riders with ankle or foot injuries were not wearing motorcycle boots (Hurt, 1981). But the best study is one addresses your chances of a permanent disability from an accident -- a study of UK motorcycle injuries found that this permanent disability rating decreases as you go up the body. That is, fewer people are disabled from upper leg injuries, chest, or back injuries than from foot injuries.
Given the number of foot injuries and the severity of them, and the fact that very smart people are making gear that designed to protect you from this, best to just go with it. Get motorcycle boots and protect your ankles and shins. Ones that have pads over your inner and outer anklebones, a shin pad, a shifter pad and a laterally stiff sole. Ones that have a fairly smooth sole so they don't catch on things. Tight enough to resist violent removal (unlike shoes or work boots that tend to come off in accidents.). Boots that are specifically built to resist crushing and twisting injuries that happen in motorcycle accidents and protect your medial malleolus, lateral malleolus, calcaneus, etc.
Just get the dang motorcycle boots! Dang, after writing this, I'm thinking I need to upgrade my commuter boots.
