Many people were falling in love with bikes and biker culture over the course of the pandemic. If a motorcycle has recently become your vehicle of choice to avoid cramped public transport as well, there are some things you should invest in. Most importantly: Buy the right gear to protect yourself and stay comfortable on your motorcycle. Here’s what to look for in a good set of protective motorcycle gear and clothing.
Motorcycle Clothing and Safety Gear for Beginners
Motorcycles are notorious for their accidents for a reason. The bikes lack the protection a car offers us with its carriage, airbags, and seatbelt, and are generally harder to control and easier to overlook in traffic. Safety training is an important step in riding responsibly. Learning about the most dangerous situations for bikers and how to react to them is a great tool.
But no matter how skilled you are, accidents still happen. Because of this, it’s crucial to buy the right equipments to protect yourself. Following are two benefits of buying the right motorbike accessories:
- It keeps you comfortable and more alert, helping you to avoid accidents.
- It protects your body when a crash cannot be avoided.
Here are the most essential parts of motorcycle gear and what to look out for.
Gloves
Your hands are most likely the first thing to get impacted when you hit something or try to catch yourself. Since you don’t only need them to control the bike, but also to perform actions in your day-to-day, it makes sense to protect them as much as possible and keep them comfortable and nimble while riding.
An armored glove that covers and stabilizes your wrist is the best option. Professional racing gloves naturally offer the best protection and are built like little tanks to keep your hands safe in high-velocity impacts. They might not always be necessary for casual riding, though. On the other hand, simple leather gloves and half-gloves don’t nearly give you enough protection.
Make sure the glove:
- is made from a tough, abrasion-resistant fabric
- has double stitching
- has armor covering your wrist, knuckles, and fingers
- has padding and possibly armor on the palm
You can order motorcycle gloves online and try out which gloves fit your hands without restricting their movement.
Jackets
A proper protective motorcycle jacket requires the appropriate materials and armor to keep you safe. Like the gloves, they should be made from leather or synthetic fabrics that can survive contact with the pavement and protect you from objects penetrating and cutting your skin. Typically, you can tighten them around your wrists, collar, and hips to keep wind from entering while you ride.
Another critical feature is reinforced and padded areas covering especially vulnerable parts. Those are usually your elbows, shoulders, back and hip. Good motorcycle gear has changeable armor in pockets covering these spots.
Pants & Jumpsuits
The same basic rules apply to pants. The tough fabric protects you from road-rash and injuries. Here, the armor and padding cover areas like your knees.
There are some motorcycle pants and other motorcycle clothing that are designed to look more casual. Those are often jeans mixed with tougher fabrics, like Kevlar, and more subtle armor. If you want to buy one of these, make sure the pants still have the appropriate safety standard and would survive contact with the road and other impacts.
If you want to wear your street clothes under your protective gear, a motorcycle jumpsuit is a good option. You can easily wear it over other clothing and store it when you are off your bike. It is usually lighter than a motorcycle jacket & co. but still offers padding and armor.
Footwear
Motorcycle boots should be made from a tough material like leather as well. The best protection comes with boots that cover and stabilize your ankle to keep your foot from twisting. Another good feature are hardened toe and heel boxes.
Many motorcycle shoes have zippers or Velcro fasteners. If they have laces, make sure you can secure them to keep them from getting stuck or tangled.
Eye and face protection
Your helmet should cover these areas. If it doesn’t, you should invest in slightly tinted motorcycle goggles with UV-protection. They will protect your eyes from the sun, wind, flying particles, snow, and rain.
Helmets
There are many types of motorcycle helmets. Since an open face helmet does not protect your chin and nose, you should always choose either a full-face or modular helmet. The latter has the option to raise the chin bar if needed, but can be transformed to a full-face helmet during a ride.
To keep impacts from injuring your head, the hard shell and foam layers of the helmet catch and redistribute the force. It’s not rare that a motorcycle accident ends up splitting a helmet in two. Since you’d rather not want that to happen to your head, it makes sense to invest in the best protective helmets available. Many foundations and institutes, like the International Motorcycling Federation (FIM), test helmets and give their certificates to effective products.
The protective abilities of a helmet lessen after about 5 years, and every impact to the shell can leave a micro fissure that reduces the helmet’s effectiveness. If you were in an accident or dropped your helmet, it is best to replace it then, or generally every half-decade. These are the reasons why you should never buy pre-owned helmets. In many cases, you cannot trust the owner’s description of the helmet’s age and condition.
Conclusion
Whether you get into a motorcycle accident or not is not entirely up to you. Since you can’t prevent them entirely, it is best to take protective measures beforehand. An important part of responsible riding is using the right protective gear. Armor, abrasion-resistant materials, and certified safety standards are important features of good motorcycle gear, especially to those who are new on the road.
