Quote:
Originally Posted by Roark
.............. a lot of riders simply aren't exposed to proper gear usage and riding techniques. Lots of my friends and family have ridden motorcycles before, and none of them have bought motorcycle specific jackets, pants, boots, or gloves. Most wore 3/4 helmets, leather working gloves, jeans, and work boots. To say they were stupid for their "decisions" would be incorrect. They were but ignorant, as there is NO advertisement for proper gear or training here in Memphis. I've been lucky to never have lost anyone.
My dad rode a '79 KZ1000 for 15 years, logging nearly 100,000 miles all around the Mid South region. Not once did he lay his bike down.. Similarly, not once did he wear more than a full faced helmet, jeans, and some leather working gloves. When I showed him my REV'IT jacket, he nearly laughed at himself for not knowing about various safety gear.
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I find these statements very correct.
Not only that, when I started riding by the half of the last century, some street riders and all racers could only wear helmets like this:
Heavy fiberglass top, soft leather over the neck and ears, some internal cushion.
Leather suits, boots and gloves were used only by professional racers, and still I saw plenty of amateur races in which minimum protection was used.
As years went by, machines became more powerful, fast and deadly and roads became faster and traffic more complex, still yet, there always were ignorant and wise riders.
Your father could do what he did without getting hurt or killed because he was one of the wise riders: he never put himself in a position in which he had to test any protecting gear.
In other words, he rode in a way that he never needed the protective potential of his full faced helmet and working gloves.
Motorcycling safety is much more complicate than wearing protecting gear.
I consider that gear is the last line of defense, which will do its best when we have jumped several layers of prevention or when that extraordinary dangerous situation arrives.
I believe that it is important to talk about the limitations of gear regarding protection in falls and collisions, in order to eliminate any false sense of protection that inexperienced riders may get.
The accident of your friend is far from typical because the level of tissue and bones damage without important damage to his brain.
Most motorcycle accidents happen at much lower speed (around 30 mph), being the brain the more vulnerable vital organ.
The damage that the body of your friend suffered was caused by sudden deceleration from high rate of speed.
That deceleration is translated into huge instantaneous forces able to break bones and liquify brains.
There is only so much deceleration (or g-forces) that the normal human body can tolerate (around 25 times gravity):
Please read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-force
The only sure way to reduce damage is reducing the speed.
As our bikes gain speed, tremendous energy is being accumulated at a square rate.
In this way, a bike with a speed of 80 mph has accumulated exactly twice the potentially destructive energy that it would have traveling at 57 mph.
While riding the streets, we cannot count on the good judgement, attention and capability to see of the drivers among which we are moving relatively fast.
We cannot afford a collision, even at moderate speed.
All we have are our vision, judgement and skills.
Those three important tools are very closely related to accelerations, speeds and decelerations; hence, to the main potential killer:
accumulated energy.
Your father was able to wisely handle those three tools for thousands of miles.
