I've observed my wife following two similar incidents. In the first incident, she high-sided a bicycle as a result of a dog hitting her rear wheel. In the second, she high-sided a motorbike as a result of ignorant cornering. The bicycle incident was at perhaps 12 mph. The motorbike incident was at perhaps 25 to 30 mph. She slid only a short distance in the bicycle incident. Perhaps 20 feet. She slid and tumbled about 40 feet in the motorbike incident.

The damage she received was not proportionate. In the bicycle incident she was wearing high quality, strong professional cycling gear. Cheek ZMC fracture repaired by surgery, torn thumb ligament repaired by surgery. Chin abrasion left a scar, deep knuckle and finger abrasions from wearing through her reasonably armored gloves (not quite bad enough to require grafts), deep shoulder abrasion, leg abrasions. The damage resulted from her impact quartering to the right front, and she slid that way, the helmet and her protective glasses taking up most head abrasion as she bunched up a bit following impact and loss of consciousness.

In the motorbike incident, she was wearing a 3/4 helmet, a modern poly armored mesh jacket, high leather shoes, heavy jeans, and light motorsport gloves. She went down very hard on hip, elbow, and shoulder, flipped over and slid on her back a little bit, then tumbled onto her front. The effect of the protective gear was quite interesting.

The helmet didn't hit with initial impact, just slid a little bit on the back, and then took abrasion on the quarter during the face side down slide. I will use this helmet again, since it didn't hit. (I was following in my truck so I can tell it didn't take a hit). The abrasion did nothing to it really. I suspect a bike helmet would have suffered far more from abrasion.

The jeans did not protect her knees and she received nasty abrasions that will scar.

The light gloves nicely prevented abrasion. I can't see any wear at all on them. But the lack of impact padding led to her having light contract pressure abrasions and some bad hand bruising. Where the jacket pulled back and the gloves didn't cover she picked up a nasty abrasion on the back of her wrist. I've replaced those gloves with ones that cover the wrist and have excellent impact padding.

The mesh jacket was the most interesting. It's by First Gear and is a poly material. CE certified armor in the elbows, shoulders, and back. Cordura patches in elbows. First impact on her hip was protected by the jacket. I can hardly see a sign of what had to be a strong impact, based on the large amount of purple flesh! The elbow armor and cordura worked well. Little abrasion on the cordura. She did suffer contact impact abrasion on her elbow and jammed her shoulder pretty well. The slide is most interesting. The initial high-speed slide on her side wore a hole in the mesh, apparently where it folded over. On her back, another fold-over area wore a hole, but the mesh really did nicely where sliding abrasion was distributed. On her front slide, many areas where the mesh folded or was stressed showed holes.

The holes were interesting. Appears to be melted. The inner mesh liner did not melt. According to published reports, the melted mesh material isn't nice to pull out of road rash. This seems the primary weakness of the mesh jackets typically available. That, and they're one-shot items.

Regardless, had she been wearing the typical motorbiking garb of tank top, shorts, and tennis shoes she would still be in a hospital undergoing skin grafts. So the gear worked very well. She was much less hurt than in the bicycle crash.

So. We wear relatively light stuff to cycle. More protective gear is standard for motorcyclists, including nicely ventilated gear. The impact points are generally the same on motor & pedal falls. The bicycle gear aims to protect head from impact and provide minor abrasion resistance for bicycling. The motorbike gear aims to cushion hard falls and protect head, chin from impact, and to allow substantial sliding without road abrasion. Yet the speed ranges traveled in overlap greatly. Most motorbike crashes are at fairly low speed, 40 mph and under. Well within the speeds we routinely reach on bicycles.

I want better protective gear for cycling. A helmet with a light chinprotector. And lightly padded, abrasion resistant shorts and jersey. And better armored gloves. This stuff should be available. Shoulder pads, hip pads, and abrasion resistant panels on shoulders, back, hips. I am thinking the mesh material backed by something as a melt barrier would be excellent. The material is thick and provides some padding right there.

Surely this type of ventilated protective gear could be engineered and still be cool. Anyone done it?

The problem is really in climbing. So unzipping is an option. At speed, one needs relatively little venting. For example, my cordura motorbike jacket ventilates great with just two little slots open in front and two in back, so long as I'm going at 25 mph or higher. And my full face helmet is cool at 25 and above with just tiny vents open.

Think there would be a market? I can think of some recent TDF riders who would be more comfortable today were protective hip pads standard in racing gear.

Maybe learning to ride a bike safely might help.

downhill freestyle riders use armored gear all the time, six-six-one is a leading manufacturer but I'm sure there are others. Zoobombers have taken to wearing full face BMX/downhill helmets in the last few years after a few incidents with broken teeth and jaws, also readily available. I normally accessorize on Zoobomb with knee and elbow pads, but I crashed once on my hip which was unprotected, hockey pants would probably help there but I haven't taken that step yet.

However, you might look a bit foolish and/or get a bit warm wearing some of this stuff on a normal road ride, I certainly don't gear up like this for my normal around town riding.

I frequent the Sierra Trading Post web site, they often have good deals on closeouts.

https://www.sixsixone.com/sixsixone_bike.aspx
https://www.sierratradingpost.com/d/4...tive-Wear.html

What a forking stroke of genius that is.

Did you even read the OP?

Mandovoodoo, so sorry for your wife's injuries. I really feel for you two.

I couldn't read the whole post. I'm sorry.

Helmets that bridge the gap between full face MX and beer cooler atop the head would be nice. I think some downhill helmets approach this goal, but are still too heavy for my taste.

A lot of the body armour stuff you describe is worn by downhillers, as mentioned above. I personally can't even stand the airiest lycra available covering my elbows and knees in the summer, so I'm not in your demographic.

BTW, it's nigh on impossible to highside at 12mph unless on slick mud, ice, wet leaves, oil slick whathaveyou. Dog or no dog.

here's some lightweight hip protection from six-six-one

https://www.sixsixone.com/Catalog_661...8-576daf190317

Think MTB and you are well covered. Really.

From shin plates to neck braces... the MTB community has it in some form or another. My son does MTB and jumps; there is a lot of gear available.

Now as to application for commuting or daily wear... yeah it has merits, but it also further signifies the potential dangers of cycling.

Now ask yourself why this sort of stuff is NOT needed, nor asked for, in certain European countries... where folks ride bikes in street clothes... in far greater numbers than over here... in the USofA.

That actually wasn't the subject. There exist a variety of remedial programs concerning reading and logic. You might consider looking into them. Also, genetic therapy might be available to tone down your "*******" gene. Or you could go to Switzerland and end it all.

Thanks!

Outside of competitive, cool weather events, no.

I'm not primarily thinking of custom gear for 1. The 661 link was very useful. I'm thinking that a whole market exists for such things on the road. Prior to motorcycling I'd not looked into armor and protective gear. I remain impressed at how comfortable the protective gear is, and how advanced it is. I'm not necessarily all that impressed with the durability of the mesh, but remain pleased with its ability to let air through. I'm sure more expensive mesh with a higher abrasion resistance would be better. My mesh jacket let more air through to bare skin than my cycling jersey.

For road cycling, I've seen enough hip and shoulder damage to consider armor worthwhile. In general, sliding seems to cut through standard materials quite quickly. The hip and butt damage we see on racing cyclists all the time could possibly be highly limited.

It simply looks like a good market. I have too many irons in the fire at the moment, but am considering doing some preliminary design work.

Protecting my wife a bit would be helpful, too. She's actually a very good cyclist. Much more graceful on a bicycle than walking!

As to the European example, the traffic mix and expectations are considerably different. I haven't tracked the differences, but while cycling there I saw several accidents. Broken skull. Broken leg. Lots of skin lost. And last year I ran into a 2 wheeler friend who lost an arm and a leg in an accident in Italy. Europeans tend to tolerate and allow more risk. Sometimes to their misery.

It's an interesting concept. I might attempt to get myself invited to a motorbike trade show sometime, meet the manufacturers.

In the meantime, whenever I want new gear, I have a wife to loan my gear too so it gets worn out!!

The day I have to "armor up" to enjoy a ride around the park is the day I stop cycling.

Seriously, I ride thousands of miles a year, have maybe fallen over due a couple times, with some occasional bumps and bruising. Nothing to get excited about.

Were I hit by a car tomorrow I don't think it would change my clothing choice.

Maybe getting your social skills to the stage where you can have real live friends and even a girlfriend would help?

People overestimate the abilities of cycle helmets in many ways, but a decent one can definitely eat up abrasion damage in a slider. Your wife is to be congratulated on being among the minority of riders to wear one correctly, preventing it from separating during the slide. I'd interested to know what model helmet she was wearing?

You can get cordura gear designed for mountain biking. Search for Endura Singletrack shorts.

These exist - look at offroad and trials helmets.

Again, it's already available:

https://www.wiggle.co.uk/c/cycle/7/Body_Armour_-_Cycle/

I don't how good this stuff is or what the overheating is like; I do know some hardcore messengers favoured it BITD.

I think unzipping on the move will create more accidents than the gear protects from. The real need for protection is at the joints and the side of the legs anyway - these are the slide areas.

That said, with good technique accidents should be very infrequent - your wife got unlucky.

No, the idiot's right - didn't your wife do that course where you ride at 20mph and people throw dogs at your back wheel? They start with purse dogs and move up to dobermans - I thought everyone did that course! Really, you were asking for trouble if you didn't take it...

I'm primarily considering whether more-protective gear that is just as comfortable and almost as light as current cycling gear can be designed and marketed at a reasonable price. My motorcycle jacket was $125 and is much higher quality in stitching and possibly materials than cycling gear of similar prices. Much more complex. Removable armor, multilayer skid pads, ventilation panels, reflective material, microfill zip-in liner. Not that something like that is good for bicycling, but it shows that adding protection doesn't have to add much cost.

She was wearing a Bell helmet. I don't know where it is - it's still around. She wears them correctly. She's actually a very skilled rider. I don't know that anyone could have avoided her accident - she did the right moves, ran out of road to evade, kept her speed up, but the dog (very large) ran into her rear wheel at nearly full run. She's just not a good motorbiker. Now she agrees she should get training!

As to those thinking such gear wouldn't be useful - watch bicycle racing sometime. Chin protection would work nicely, too. I've seen a good number of chin and face injuries among the helmeted. ZMC fractures are pretty common (I asked her surgeon about them). He also indicated he sees people for broken jaws and teeth from cycling injuries on a regular basis. Usually someone else is working on skin repair.

And those who think it won't happen to them. Good luck. I know I'm basically riding over a belt sander. Much is likely denial and risk compensation. "I'm a good rider so I won't go down."

A similar pattern exists with motorcyclists. Most seem to embrace essentially nudity on motorcycles. A helmet and little else of real protection. There are the touring big bike tandem riders. Nude guy, nude girl, little helmets. The squids with the fancy full face helmet & shorts. The Harley bad boys in tank tops and mini-helmets. Then there are the real motard and sport bike riders in full leather. And the long-distance boys in lurid cordura on nice comfy standard motorcycles, no skin showing at all. I seem to be one of the few who ride on errands fully dressed in boots, full face helmet, crash worthy gloves, jacket etc - and with flourescent green vest as well.

I noticed with great interest that I ride the downhill portions of my commute at the same speed on motorcycle & bicycle, but I'm nearly naked on my bicycle. And less visible (no giant Xenon headlight, no huge tail light). Why is protective road gear not displayed and emphasized in cycle shops? Even kevlar cloth panels could be standard. And gloves with plastic knuckle protectors. Just a little bit goes a long way.

I used to drive a wrecker. I recall well two different outcomes from very similar shunts with motorbikes. Both were dart out evasion lowsides at about 40 mph. The sportbiker in leathers was standing there talking to the police, wearing lightly scuffed leathers while I hoisted up his nicely trashed bike. The jeans wearing fellow in the shortly helmet was being wrapped for transport and was screaming, blood all over the road. Think I prefer the non-bleeding outcomes.

As I said, look into MTB gear...

I used google and searched for MTB body armour... and got 131000 responses... such as this one:
https://www.xsportsprotective.com/mou...rotection.html

You can put it together any way you want... from just knee and shin protection, or elbow protection to full armour.

But like dobber, I also feel if I have to wear that for everyday road cycling... there is something seriously wrong. And I am speaking from a position of car/bike crash experience.

manovoodoo: I think you have some good ideas. I think lightweight armored mesh could definitely help in a crash.

Keep in mind that motorcycles and bicycles don't compare very well. As you've noticed, a 40mph crash on a 500 lb motorcycle results in much more rider damage than a 40mph crash on a 20 lb bicycle: there's a lot more momentum involved in a motorcycle crash.

The problem, then, becomes finding your market. Who would use lightweight armor? The high-end racing crowd may, but it would have to be very light. Commuters aren't a very big market. Downhillers and motorcyclists would need something more substantial.


Maybe get a motorcycle apparel company involved? If they're already set up for producing reinforced mesh clothing, they can probably turn out a less-armored version suitable for a bicycle without too much trouble.

Nobody has to wear protective gear period. Including helmets.

I'm not promoting the use of existing heavy gear designed for other sports for everyday road cycling.

I'm examining the modern approach to protective gear in general and hypothesizing that light protective features can easily and inexpensively be incorporated into standard - not specialty - cycling gear.

Any individual's experience has no bearing on the matter. Some horribly unskilled cyclists go a lifetime with no trouble at all. Some highly skilled cyclists end up sliding on asphalt through bad luck or momentary skill failure.

The cyclists I have asked about whether they would have preferred protective gear in their accidents have uniformly indicated that light protective gear either served nicely (helmets) or would have been very useful.

The trauma nurses and doctors I've spoken with universally indicate that protective gear reduces injuries, although some creates new problems. The poly mesh used in light mesh jackets gets pointed to as causing cleanup difficulties when it melts into wounds, but the medical personnel confirm that the injury depth and extent would have been more severe without the gear.

looks like a nice approach.

I suspect there's a large amount of denial. It can happen to people. In my limited 100,000 miles of cycling over the last 40 years I've gone down several times and suffered nasty road rash in areas that would have been protected by very light and simple gear. Sometimes a relatively minor sliding fall proves preferable to the other alternatives.

It's likely a cultural thing. Bicycles are slow, safe machines that don't really require much thought. They aren't dangerous. In contrast, motorcycles are dangerous overpowered death traps requiring massive amounts of armor. Yet the performance envelopes overlap a great deal. A bicyclist coming off a bicycle and sliding at 25 mph down an asphalt road and a helmeted motorcyclist moving the same speed and suffering the same slide face identical conditions. Commentators would point to the bicyclist and indicate "at least he was wearing a helmet, it could have been worse" and to the motorcyclist as "he should have been wearing riding clothes, gloves, and boots, the moron." A motorcyclist coming off at 45 and a bicyclist coming off at 45 also seem to face the same hazards.

I can easily imagine a world where cycling gear for the road contained a range of protective features and nobody batted an eye.

This is a useful thread. It illustrates that the bar to much innovation remains the way people think about things, especially risk. Risk compensation and perception prove real barriers to objective consideration of risk and counters to risk.

I'll continue to pursue this. I imagine opinions would change if:

1) A major clothing name in cycling introduced light protective gear for road riding
2) Major cycle racers adopted and promoted such gear
3) Bicycling ran persistent promotional features on the comfort and protectiveness of such clothing adjacent to splashy ads for such clothing
4) The clothing was comparable in cost to existing clothing.


A simple approach would be to put abrasion resistant fabric in common abrasion areas. The next step would be to put a bit of light padding in those areas. I expect that light and porous abrasion resistant fabric suitable for jerseys and shorts exists already and could easily be adapted.

It's still a cultural thing. Like hiking boots. Most hiking doesn't require boots, but that's what people wear.

Still, the big thing seems to be chin protection. The trauma folks really emphasized this. Rips and tears, breaks and tissue loss in the face is a tough thing to deal with during and after recovery.

I suppose nobody here will ever face an accident, from what I gather. Maybe you're the dark clothes invisicyclists I see. Riding well, out of the way, but hard to spot. I prefer the lurid cyclists I can see from 1000 yards. I prefer to be one of those, too.

I'll pick up some of the padded and abrasion resistant stuff that exists and evaluate it.

I don't think full-fledged armor is called for in everyday riding, but I'd take a look at reinforced mesh clothing. You mention melting as a problem with it, but I imagine that's less of a problem in a bicycle accident.

Yes, everything the OP is asking for already exists, except the requirement that it should be as cheap and as light as standard gear. Which isn't really feasible - current gear is built to minimize weight more than anything else - even the average helmet is lighter than it was in 1990, at the cost of being less effective. It's like my ideal bike - I'd like it to be a strong as an MTB but weight only 17lb and fold, and still cost only the same as a Wal Mart bike. But I'm not holding my breath while I wait for it.

For helmets look at

https://www.bikeforums.net/advocacy-safety/561005-advice-sought-how-protect-face.html

I believe objective consideration of the actual risk level of bicycling would indicate that mesh clothing wear would provide an insignificent amount of risk reduction for the cycling population, and would be a gross overcompensation/countermeasure for a relatively minor risk level.

Andy Goldfine (founder of Riderweahouse) is a bicyclist and motorcyclist, and makes some gear that might meet your needs in the winter, but not in the summer. I've got a beloved old 'stitch that I still wear as a jacket, but I've never worn it while bicycling. I don't think it offers enough venting to offset all the heat it would trap even if I wore it in the winter up here in Chicago.

Those mesh jackets might be the best thing for your needs. Many of us were skeptical of them when they came out, but the jackets offered way more protection than we thought and got a lot of riders to start wearing safety gear.

Really? I think a light-weight reinforced fabric designed to reduce road rash would be nice to have.

Is it necessary? Probably not: how big of a problem is road rash anyway? It's rarely life-threatening. It hurts, though, and being in pain never helps, so being able to prevent it / minimize it could be nice.

This is the advocacy and SAFTEY forum, all I suggested is SAFLEY riding a bike, as far as MOTORcycles find a MOTORcycle forum. I don't make light of someones injuries even self inflicted ones.
I see dogs before they hit me it's called situational awareness. In my experience dogs try to cut you off. Do they have a leash law where you live, did you sue the dog owner? The best thing is paying attention, biking is relatively safe and I don't see the need for robo-cop gear on the street and racing wieght weenies worry about grams why would they want more?

are you a professional asshat or do you just play one on BikeForums?



some people think this discussion is interesting and pertinent; if you don't, please stop posting in this thread, as you haven't contributed one constructive comment yet.