Training wheels would offer superior protection from boo-boos and not just for your hands.

Do you also wear a mouth guard, knee and elbow pads, steel toed shoes? Gotta protect those body parts, JUST IN CASE! Eh? Or why not full body armor; wouldn't it offer increased protection from nasty boo-boos?

Well, here's a picture of me before my commute in this morning. After all, you can never be too prepared. :D

http://www.fresno6.com/Air%20conditi...%20(Large).jpg

pix
 

Where are your gloves?

Today is a fall day - he didn't wear them. ;)

They keep me from getting blisters on my hands.

(And I get those cool tan marks from the hole on top.)

More importantly, you need your hands to tend to the wounds on the rest of your body. :lol:

You've been peeking!

Why? Dogs don't have hands. :D

I see most of the US posters are in the northern states... that's gotta make a difference!

For MTB I prefer 1/2 finger gloves for a few reasons:
1. they are cooler on hot days.
2. my stubby fingers don't fit well in most FF gloves.
3. I like to be able to feel the levers and I don't like the subtle sliding of material between my fingers and levers.

To each, his/her own!

Ya, but I can't reach my crotch with my mouth, either. :lol:

Exactly. Gloves protect against injuries that are relatively likely to happen but which are only irritating. Helmets protect against rare injuries that are potentially debilitating.

I wear whatever i want, regardless of what you think.

That being said, carpenter gloves, full finger, all weather.

I like to rub the fingers over the tires while riding if I accidentally rolled over some glass.

You're not supposed to reach out with your hand to cushion your fall. That's a good way to break a wrist or collar bone. Tuck and roll.

I usually wear the half finger padded gloves if I'm riding my road bike with drop bars. Probably don't need them for my 5 mile commute, but I have them and don't feel like leaving them on the shelf at home.

I agree 100%, but most people will still try to break their fall with their hands.

I mostly commute, and I mostly wear fingerless gloves.
For short rides in nice wx, no gloves are ok.
For almost any rides in cold wx (Minnesota winters), full gloves are mandatory for me.
Fingerless I wear a lot for two reasons. First, the padding does help if I'm biking more than a few miles. As cdotbois points out, hard pavement and thin padding on the handlebars and you'll start to feel it pretty quick. Second, I use a grip shifter, and full gloves are kind of awkward to shift with (over- or under-clicking), so fingerless is the best compromise.

When in an accident your body tends to react instinctively. Unless you retrain that instinct more often than not crashing will result in putting your hand out. The end result is scraped palms, broken wrists, and broken elbows. Still an improvement over nose diving into the pavement.

FYI: you can do that with bare hands too. The only downside is you're likely to cut your fingers open... And you get blood all over your bar tape... And it hurts...

After years of cycling, I've gotten pretty good at tucking and rolling while flying off a bicycle, however, it really depends on how the bike ejects you. Sometimes things happen too quickly, or at a bad trajectory.

I had a front brake malfunction (1968 style center pulls) where the brake arm snapped and jammed the wheel. It launched me directly into an unexpected superman maneuver over the drops and into a parking lot. Tuck and roll was not an option, but putting my hands out to protect my face was! I didn't have gloves. I eventually healed but it hurt pretty bad for a while, so I wear gloves now.

I also find having the padding under my palms absorbs a bit of road vibration, and mine (the gloves...) have a soft fuzzy part that work well for wiping the sweat off my face on a hard ride/hot day.

The cyclist tan. Fingerless gloves make it easier to fiddle with downtube shifters, do shoe laces, grab snacks or camera from jersey pocket, and dial cell phone.

Alright, I'll admit it. The main reason I wear fingerless gloves is so that I can pick my nose while riding.

Does that make me a bad person?

That wasn't really what I meant, but let's just say we have an agreement about bicycle helmets and gloves providing about equal value at risk mitigation and leave it at that.

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/6...llfacedmb6.jpg
Great for knocking on a body panels to move 'em over into their lanes.

Dang TJ!

I have a pair of Cedric Gracia gloves with the Cabrone (roll the "r" when you say it) knuckles like that! Brown camo. They do make a nice sound on the quarterpanel of a text-messaging motorist's vehicle don't they!

I have massive Oury grips on my hardtail and without the gloves my hands hurt. I get a little clustrophobic with gloves so only wear full fingers when it gets cold. I love fingerless gloves, the only drawback was losing my manly calluses when I made the switch to gloves years back.

I wear Mechanix gloves.
Light and cool.

You could do like me, and just cut one finger off of your full finger gloves.

Where are the helmet teeth**********?

you were lucky, thats all

i have a set of cold weather gloves (louie garneau windtex eco) which are nice (a little thin) and a set of adidas fingerless gloves. i also wore a set of bell gloves until they totally fell apart.

gloves are good to have in case of a fall and for comfort, and i'm going to say they're absolutely necessary if you ride at a faster pace. someone said earlier that their hands grip on the pavement when they hit the ground, leading to bruised legs. i'm going to say that at a faster pace, what happens is this:
1) fall
2) hands hit first and slide
2.5) elbows hits, slide
3) torso hits, continue sliding, begin barrel roll
4) legs hit, barrel roll continues
5) stop.

upon post crash examination of my bell gloves, i tore cleanly through the leather. the elbows were also bleeding everywhere.

the difference between elbows and hands though, is that hands are very difficult, surgically, to rebuild skin on. the skin may be too tight after healing. also, seriously injuring, or even severing a hand tendon is EXTREMELY bad news, and also very difficult to repair. don't take the risk. gloves are comfortable and useful, especially if they have a nose-wipe patch (i use mine every single ride, haha).

I forgot about this use for gloves, the famous, (by New Zealand standards), mountain biking Kennett Brothers always said of gloves "left for sweat and right for snot".