To Pad or not to Pad? - Armor and its benefits

[kilo3]

9 hours ago, jthayer09 said:

But his core statement is also disingenuous - and I think intentionally so, because he's shilling to sell more Helite airbags.

Ding ding ding, commodity pricing on motorcycle gear with padding. Lots of margin on the latest and greatest tech is great for a distributor.

[2and3cylinders]

I'm going to sound as my youngest daughter says like a grumpy old white man

Let's call his vid a joke and stop being so esoteric scientific and cynical and move on🤫

[Hollybrook]

A thoughtful rebuttal:

https://youtu.be/NOJxubCS0wM?si=-Po27A_2_VA2TelY

Edited April 3 by Hollybrook

[bwringer]

11 hours ago, jthayer09 said:

...Of course, the solution to this "problem" that he poses is to toss your pads and buy the Helite airbag that F9 sells.

 

Thanks for doing the digging into that "horse girl" crack, @jthayer09 .

And yeah, that last bit about selling airbags is a little problematic. Just go in with your eyes open as to his motivations; at least the Helite airbag system is legitimately a very good bit of kit. He's selling, but he's not selling snake oil at least.

 

Still, there were a lot of useful points, so let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Yes, better armor from the factory in riding gear sure would be pretty darn nice, and you can't deny that airbag gear can be pretty dang useful. 

However, there is better armor available through the aftermarket (he sort of skips over this fact), and high-end brands like Klim often include better armor in their gear. (My Klim jacket uses D30, for example.)

He also made the point that armor should be sized to the person, which I definitely agree with. The CE regs don't seem to adequately address this; as an XXL sort of person, I'd certainly like to buy armor that is sized for my limbs and weight, and the greater forces with which I hit the ground.

 

 

Aerostich gear includes armor they developed long before CE standards, and it's interesting to see their take on it:

https://www.aerostich.com/protection

It's interesting that some of their armor does not technically comply with CE standards because there's a hard shell where the armor exceeds the standards, but the portions of softer foam beyond the shell do not meet the letter of the standards. Which I suppose is a problem with the way the standards are written.

FWIW, I find Aerostich's armor to be extremely unpleasant, hot, and bulky. It is, undeniably, very effective, but it's damn near unusable for me and a lot of riders. Some people are fine with the stuff, or at least find a way to get used to it, but I never could.

[jthayer09]

44 minutes ago, 2and3cylinders said:

I'm going to sound as my youngest daughter says like a grumpy old white man

Let's call his vid a joke and stop being so esoteric scientific and cynical and move on🤫

No, it's 2024 let me be outraged at everything 🤪

 

26 minutes ago, bwringer said:

Thanks for doing the digging into that "horse girl" crack, @jthayer09 .

And yeah, that last bit about selling airbags is a little problematic. Just go in with your eyes open as to his motivations; at least the Helite airbag system is legitimately a very good bit of kit. He's selling, but he's not selling snake oil at least.

 

Still, there were a lot of useful points, so let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Yes, better armor from the factory in riding gear sure would be pretty darn nice, and you can't deny that airbag gear can be pretty dang useful. 

However, there is better armor available through the aftermarket (he sort of skips over this fact), and high-end brands like Klim often include better armor in their gear. (My Klim jacket uses D30, for example.)

He also made the point that armor should be sized to the person, which I definitely agree with. The CE regs don't seem to adequately address this; as an XXL sort of person, I'd certainly like to buy armor that is sized for my limbs and weight, and the greater forces with which I hit the ground.

My fiancée rides horses so it is something I already had some research on previously. The equestrian community takes safety very seriously, it's impressive. But I guess that makes sense when what you're riding can think and act on its own.

Indeed, Helite's products are top notch and - in my opinion - can stand on their own merit. I already want their MOOV airbag backpack without being misled about the safety of motorcycle armor.

CE sizing is a pain. When I did my upgrades: I ordered Axial AX2 Air pads, and they are size B elbow protectors, but all of my jackets are size A pockets except for one garment; it worked out in the end but now I have 3 jackets with upgraded armor instead of the 2 that I originally planned. I do wish more manufacturers would just list size A, B, or C (C is comically large) to make it easier. The compromise is that it seems manufacturers make armor pockets to fit D3O measurements for size A, except for RevZilla/CycleGear in-house brands: those all look to be size B pockets.

[Eventhorizon]

8 hours ago, bwringer said:

 

Yes, better armor from the factory in riding gear sure would be pretty darn nice, and you can't deny that airbag gear can be pretty dang useful. 

However, there is better armor available through the aftermarket (he sort of skips over this fact), and high-end brands like Klim often include better armor in their gear. (My Klim jacket uses D30, for example.)

 

So let me play the other side of this the reasons why "cheap" armor is put in.

1) There is a price point to meet, especially for low end "beginner" gear. Its not the best... but its better than nothing. Lets face it.. for lots of riders gear is less important then the bike its self, or don't have much money for gear anyway.

2) There are some like me that will go out and buy the better armor anyway and stuff it in the jacket.

3) No one wants bulky armor gear to put on or wear around the office, shopping, or while eating food. Bulky armor while safe is not conformable. If you want total safety, wear a track day suit every day, but you wont for the same reasons.

I can see the future of motorcycle gear where instead of armor there is a small airbags in place that allows gear and clothing to feel more natural while being protective when all the little airbags go off.

[miweber929]

On 4/3/2024 at 10:01 AM, bwringer said:

Still, there were a lot of useful points, so let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The problem I have, and with his later videos he often does this, is for the entire video he IS throwing the baby out with the bath water by saying you shouldn’t even bother wearing any armor. I’d have very little issue with video if it was “armor isn't as protective as we think it is, so there should be better standards” instead of the “shocking” statement of don’t even bother with it because it’s not helping and only airbags (surprisingly they sell expensive-ass airbag vests) help. 
 

That's just simply not true. Sure, you might still fracture your arm, but that doesn’t make good armor not at all useful. 
 

He threw the baby out first, lol!!! 

Edited April 4 by miweber929
Clarity

[bwringer]

16 hours ago, Eventhorizon said:

So let me play the other side of this the reasons why "cheap" armor is put in.

1) There is a price point to meet, especially for low end "beginner" gear. Its not the best... but its better than nothing. Lets face it.. for lots of riders gear is less important then the bike its self, or don't have much money for gear anyway.

Agreed. A lot of gray-bearded harrumphing gatekeepers in motorcycling scoff at budget gear like Bilt/Sedici and Icon, but I maintain that these have saved untold acres of skin, gallons of blood, and thousands of lives by putting riders in gear who otherwise wouldn't buy or wear it at all.

If you're of a certain age, you might remember when Icon burst onto the scene with a whole new "street/urban/punk" vibe and outrageous designs and marketing, and actually made wearing gear cool. One of their magazine ads (remember magazines?) absolutely shocked the riding world by depicting a crashed sportbike on its side, with the rider, shaken but intact, sitting on the sidewalk collecting his wits in scuffed-up Icon gear. 

The Joe Rocket brand was similar, if more low-key, and their Phoenix line ushered in the era of mesh; yes you gave up some protection, but you gained huge in wearability and greatly reduced the chances of hitting the ground in the first place due to heat stress. Gear must be worn to do any good, and that expensive black leather the harrumphing oldsters insisted on added its own brand of significant heat stroke danger to the equation as temps climbed. 

Inexpensive gear is still infinitely better than the alternative, which is all too often no gear at all. With more money you might gain a lot in things like durability, waterproofness, and comfort, but you get 90% or more of the protection even with cheap stuff.

For example, we've proven over and over that cheap full-face helmets protect just as well as expensive helmets. 

 

 

And yeah, I'll agree that the clickbaity "don't even bother wearing your armor" crap was uncalled-for and bordering on irresponsible.

But maybe not... the odds are significant that they're just trolling to get people talking about protection and armor. There's a not-that-old saying that the best way to get the correct answer on the internet is to outrage everyone by posting an incorrect answer. I wouldn't put it past this bunch...

[miweber929]

2 hours ago, bwringer said:

Agreed. A lot of gray-bearded harrumphing gatekeepers in motorcycling scoff at budget gear like Bilt/Sedici and Icon, but I maintain that these have saved untold acres of skin, gallons of blood, and thousands of lives by putting riders in gear who otherwise wouldn't buy or wear it at all.

If you're of a certain age, you might remember when Icon burst onto the scene with a whole new "street/urban/punk" vibe and outrageous designs and marketing, and actually made wearing gear cool. One of their magazine ads (remember magazines?) absolutely shocked the riding world by depicting a crashed sportbike on its side, with the rider, shaken but intact, sitting on the sidewalk collecting his wits in scuffed-up Icon gear. 

The Joe Rocket brand was similar, if more low-key, and their Phoenix line ushered in the era of mesh; yes you gave up some protection, but you gained huge in wearability and greatly reduced the chances of hitting the ground in the first place due to heat stress. Gear must be worn to do any good, and that expensive black leather the harrumphing oldsters insisted on added its own brand of significant heat stroke danger to the equation as temps climbed. 

Inexpensive gear is still infinitely better than the alternative, which is all too often no gear at all. With more money you might gain a lot in things like durability, waterproofness, and comfort, but you get 90% or more of the protection even with cheap stuff.

For example, we've proven over and over that cheap full-face helmets protect just as well as expensive helmets. 

 

 

And yeah, I'll agree that the clickbaity "don't even bother wearing your armor" crap was uncalled-for and bordering on irresponsible.

But maybe not... the odds are significant that they're just trolling to get people talking about protection and armor. There's a not-that-old saying that the best way to get the correct answer on the internet is to outrage everyone by posting an incorrect answer. I wouldn't put it past this bunch...

You've summed up my feelings almost exactly. When I was dumb, young and poor Joe Rocket was a godsend to those of us that couldn't afford Belstaff, Vanson, Bates, heck even the Hondaline stuff was stupid expensive. I was able to actually afford to buy TourMaster/Cortech, Joe Rocket, Icon, etc. and it was decent protection, way better than my Levis denim jacket I wore prior. If Cycle Gear was around with the Bilt/Sedici stuff I would have been in heaven. I have a bunch a good quality, higher end gear now but bought a Bilt leather jacket a year or so ago and it's a great, well built leather jacket perfect for running around town. 

[maximNikenGT]

On 4/3/2024 at 10:55 AM, Hollybrook said:

A thoughtful rebuttal:

https://youtu.be/NOJxubCS0wM?si=-Po27A_2_VA2TelY

F9 and the insightful dialogue here on armor took me down some deep rabbit holes during this morning’s coffee.

This incredibly insightful rebuttal from Bennet’s Bike Social brought up some very good points about additional benefits of armor. Some of the many key points that caught my attention were:

• Armor not only includes point of impact protection at key joints e.g. elbows/knees/shoulders/hips due to impact but also dispersion of forces at point of impact to minimize catastrophic garment failure due to abrasion ex. if the sleeves wear away at the elbows as seen by motorcycle riders wearing leathers whom abrade away during a long slide.
• The CE testing procedures for equestrian armor certification start at a lower number in comparison to motorcycle armor (e.g. 35 vs. 50). So while equestrian armor does have a lower testing number required of transmitted force to pass certification, the amount of transferred force reduction is less in comparison to motorcycle armor which starts at a higher amount of tested force.
• Amount of force required to break ribs is about 3-4 (according to cited study) while femur ~ 10 (conflicts with what Ryan at F9 cited e.g. ~4).  
• CE ratings appear to be evolving to have a standard for whether armor stays in place e.g. dedicated pocket for armor. Additionally the standard looks to further evolve to verify during impact  tests whether any movement of the armor occurred e.g. is armor secured. 

 

Being in the US I’m not familiar with the BRK custom suits they cited in the Bennet’s review. Going to have to take a look at those. I’m familiar with the US Aerostich roadcrafter suits. 

Edited April 6 by maximNikenGT

[maximNikenGT]

Was going back through my current armored equipment inventory and was thinking about doing a direct comparison between armor from a Dainese GTR jacket from the ‘90s, my Aerostich TF6 armor from 2000s, then my Hit-Air Powertech armor from 2020s. 

Stumbled on this interesting observation from Aerostich on their experience with motorcycle armor and evolution since based upon Aerostich’s in-house built TF armor from pre-2k:

https://www.aerostich.com/protection

While the Aerostich TF armor does not conform to current CE standards due to shape requirements it did conform to best in class impact reduction (NOTE: This was impact reduction was tested back in November 2008). The following chart is interesting in terms of where their TF armor results landed in terms of independent testing against one of the CE standards. Couldn’t tell what the other items were along the x-axis though e.g. were they competitor armor or different classifications? 

 

 

 

Aerostich did make the following commentary on the current state of available armor:

”Despite today’s relentless marketing claims, TF impact armor and those more recently introduced consumer-branded armor types have a lot in common. All are slightly different formulations of siliconized visco-elastic foams. The shades of difference in the better types of energy absorption materials are important, the performance levels are fairly close now. Greater differences involve the cost, fit, comfort, shapes and sizes. Newer armor types have more in common with each other than TF though because most are a separate branded ingredient inside differently branded riding gear. The newer stuff is usually more expensive.”

Edited April 6 by maximNikenGT

[Ride365]

Once you get used to the Aerostich pads, you forget they are there. A bit hard and non conforming when it's cool/cold out, but once body heat warmed up are good to go. 

[knyte]

IMHO comparing equestrian safety gear to motorcycle safety gear is a red herring, a false equivalency.  I grew up with horses, and learned to ride a horse long before a bicycle.  As a family we still have just under a dozen.

I never once wore protective gear, mostly because it wasn't available or popular back then.  Even now I don't think I would.  The reason being - it's simple - the types of surfaces and mechanisms of injuries on horseback are completely different than motorcycles.  I usually rode on dirt or grass - and it's far softer than asphalt.  I rarely went past about 30 km/h on horseback, but on bikes...?  ...multiply that by...well, several, at least.  On a bike, an unexpected sudden flight path into asphalt, possibly another vehicle, has a far greater impact, no pun intended.  So, slower speeds + softer landing = never once had a serious injury.  And trust me when I say I was thrown off my fair share, over many years 

None of this is to say one should or shouldn't use gear on horses, I'm just saying these are two different activities completely.

It wasn't until I starting riding bicycles and motorcycles that more serious injuries started happening...so, yeah.  Can't compare the two.  Another punchline of the joke that is the video.

While we're at it, what about MX gear ?  Now that is ARMOUR at a different level.  No one mentioned that in this discussion.  Too many holes in that vid to take it seriously.  I, too, will keep watching for the production value and writing - but reality is reality.

[2and3cylinders]

My Hit-Air vest is made in Nippon.  They have equestrian models too.  Makes sense to me.

Why is this so complicated?

It's beaten to death.

I thought it was a April Fool's Day joke.

Some young Canadian YouTube wonder who rides a bike just OK thinks thinks he's extremely smart despite the fact he never knew the world before the internet let alone computers.

They didn't have no stinken puters!

They did what JFK said they would.  John Glen went up a Atlas missile liquid-fueled 10-foot or so diameter 85-foot long flying beer can with a Centaur solid-propellent 2nd stage tacked on.  They were still using them almost monthly as launch vehicles in the 70s when the same guys (who also made B-24s and PBYs 30 years prior at the Lindberg Field plant and were producing the Shuttle payload bay) made sure the original GD Convair Tomahawk cruise missile enable the 3rd gen later made their way to Sandam's party palace.

Encoding for punch cards was based on simple 0 / 1 sheets you'd get back in maybe a week.

It was faster for us boys to use slide rules, adding machines and 13 columnar pads with 0.5 mm mechanical pencils, then after spending a week in the shop developed hands-on the means and methods, had to make the machines that made the material we then tested using apparatus incorporating .0001" dial indicators along with spring and air powered pressure gauges.  For acceleration factors, we fixed actual gimbal mounted gyroscopes to determine force and it's distribution at various grab your ass intensities on a descending graph scale so we could refine the production of the material; basic Industrial Revolution design, industrial, manufacturing engineering.  Then we had to design and prototype the machines to finally produce the components, subassemblies and major assemblies with these fun new composites materials.  We called them advanced composites. 

It's called doing it analog.

Whether at the design end or user end Anything you can do to increase your odds, including redundancy, is The Way as they said recently.

Torture testing in practical ways, like dragging a pair of pants filled with a sand gypsum mix behind a pickup truck in their print advert...

For example, we just used calibrated sand bags to load a F106 incrementally while watching the mechanical dial indicators until we heard something crack.  Only later were stain gauges epoxied to the substrate and their bi-pole leads individually run back to a "peg-board" that interfaced later back in the lab to eventually digitize stress until failure printed out on graph paper.  The 101 & 106 wings were metal bonded together in the 1960s.  We recertified their air structures 3 times in the 70s...

Not rocket science but we tried to make ourselves appear like we were...

My 79 Sirocco was way ahead of its time.  Hurst shifter, Bilstein shocks & springs, sway bars big throttle body and tweaked mechanical VW CIS FI.  I loved embarrassing 914s and 16s up Mt. Palomar... On the way down my brakes glowed red.  Still was faster up on my Matchless G80 cafe.

We made ultralights in Dept. 018 and passed the subassemblies over the south 40 fence at the Kearny Mesa plant.