Proficient Motorcycling. David L. Hough

Чтение книги онлайн.

      If today is going to be your day to crash, what do you want between your body and the pavement?

      But even if you don’t get to crash, your riding gear has a lot to do with your ability to control the bike. I’ll leave it up to your imagination how I know this, but a couple of wasps dropping into your boot takes a lot of attention away from the task of keeping the motorcycle pointed between the lines. A sunburned neck can make it too painful to turn your head to find that car hidden in your blind spot. A bouncing stone cracking into your shin can distract you from the slippery manhole cover ahead.

      So riding gear is more than just uncomfortable body armor worn reluctantly day after day just in case today happens to be your turn to crash. Good riding gear protects against wind, sun, heat, cold, rain, and flying debris. A shatterproof face shield not only protects your eyes from grit but also keeps your face from getting wind chapped. Leather gloves not only protect your palms from road rash during a spill but also keep your knuckles from getting burned by wind and sun and help your fingers avoid blisters. Tall leather boots provide ankle support as well as protection from a hot exhaust pipe or from nasty biting insects.

      But if today does happen to be your turn to crash, it would be handy if your gear also provides impact and abrasion protection. Competition-weight leather will slide for something like 80 to 100 feet on rough concrete before it grinds through to your underwear. Cotton denim will rip to shreds in about five feet. Fabric riding suits with armored patches can be almost as abrasion resistant as leather and a lot easier to clean after a few days of high-humidity travel. Of course, we can adjust our gear to the riding conditions. The more hazardous the situation, the greater the need for good stuff. When I’m making a nighttime transit through deer country on my two-wheeled rocket, I’m inclined to wear my heavyweight leathers. When I’m driving my dual sport sidecar rig up on the logging roads, I prefer a two-piece fabric riding suit.

       Good riding gear protects against the weather and flying debris. Leather is the king in terms of abrasion resistance, but fabric suits with internal armor can provide excellent impact and abrasion protection, as well as water resistance.

      Abrasion-resistant gear is a number-one priority to keep your skin away from the pavement, but impact pads in the knees, elbows, and shoulders will cushion the blows and reduce broken bones. Leg and arm injuries can be painful, but chest and head injuries are more likely to be critical or fatal. That’s why some riders wear a spine protector or upper body armor under their jackets.

       The Helmet

      The ultimate purpose of a helmet is to prevent brain injuries during an accident. You can crack your leg or your skull and survive, but scrambled brains will bring you to a permanent halt. One really important reason for protecting your brain is that the brain doesn’t heal itself the way other body tissue does. If you bang your head hard enough to black out for a few seconds, you’ve injured your brain. And a concussion can turn into epilepsy a year or two down the road. So if you intend to get back in the saddle after the big crash, consider the importance of keeping brain injuries to a minimum. Even a $50 helmet that’s DOT approved can provide excellent protection because it’s the crushable foam inside that protects the brain, not the outer shell.

       You don’t really need a real helmet if you are clever enough and skillful enough to avoid crashes. What you wear is your business. But more than a few riders do crash, even when they didn’t expect to. It’s a bad joke to believe that a thin “party” lid with no impact liner will give you any protection when you go down.

       If you find that a full-coverage helmet is claustrophobic or difficult to wear with eyeglasses, consider one of the flip-front styles.

      There are lots of statistics on helmet use, and there have been way too many heated discussions about mandatory helmet laws—pro and con. I believe that what you wear while riding is your own business, but let’s be honest about the situation. A fake “party” lid with no internal crushable liner can’t provide any meaningful protection from sharp blows to the head. A DOT-approved helmet will provide reasonable brain protection in the typical street motorcycle crash. A full-coverage helmet can also provide jaw and face protection. According to a German study, the majority of helmet strikes in accidents are to the left and right chin areas. That’s something to think about if you have been wearing a shorty or three-quarter helmet.

      I think I understand the risks pretty well. I have one helmet with a cracked shell right at forehead level, a result of a large stone roosted from a vehicle ahead. I’ve also been hit by various potentially injurious or messy objects, including June bugs, bees, small stones, straw, hail, and seagull poop. Personally, I never go motorcycling without a helmet. My favorite style is full coverage with a flip front.

I Didn’t See You

      If you allow another motorist to knock you down, you’ll probably hear the same lame excuse: I didn’t see you. Sometimes an errant driver has looked down at the poor motorcyclist lying miserably crunched under a bent motorcycle and let slip, “Gosh, I didn’t see you. You were coming so fast, and you were wearing black leather, and besides, СКАЧАТЬ