Anxiety can help you discover your limits.
Recognize Limits
One of the easiest ways to stay out of trouble is to know your limits and always ride within them. Anxiety can help you discover your limits. It’s a clear sign that you’re riding over your head if you feel panicked.
You may be saying, “I know my limits.” Perhaps, but there are many variables that make it difficult to know exactly where the limits are, including an unfamiliar machine, a changing road surface, or complex riding situations. These can cause us to exceed the limits without knowing it, until it is too late.
For example, environmental conditions constantly change. A road that at one moment offers excellent grip can change suddenly with a light dusting of sand. Mood, fatigue, emotions, and hunger can also alter where the limits lie. Smart riders are continually evaluating the environment and their mental and physical condition so they stay ahead of trouble.
Managing risk means wearing protective gear.
Mind Over Muscles
The first rule of avoiding crashes is to use good judgment and have effective strategies for avoiding hazards. The best riders rarely if ever need to use their finely honed physical skills to save them from a crash. Instead, they rely on accurately perceiving risk and predicting what other drivers are about to do. They spot hazards early, accurately evaluate their significance, and act appropriately to minimize the likelihood of a crash. These strategies minimize—or dare I say eliminate—the need for heroic action.
Often, a street riding crash is the result of a sequence of factors that fall into place like toppling dominoes. The best riders with the strongest mental skills can detect the often-subtle clues that begin the sequence and act quickly to halt the progression.
Someone told me a story of a young man on a sport bike that rammed into the back of a minivan at a stoplight. He careened out of control at an excessive rate of speed. The intersection was at the base of a hill where the rider couldn’t see the van until it was too late. His youthful burst of adrenaline in a totally inappropriate location put him in the hospital with severe injuries.
It’s easy to blame recklessness on youth, but bad judgment applies equally to older riders, like the 50-year-old man who didn’t make a corner and hit a stone wall. Apparently, he simply made a bad judgment about the curve and didn’t have the skills to make the bike turn at the speed he was traveling. The point is that nobody is immune. It takes constant diligence to keep exuberance at bay.
Dress for the Crash
Managing risk includes protecting yourself from injury by wearing protective gear. Many riders who are involved in relatively minor crashes end up with major injuries simply because they chose not to wear protection. Well-designed protective apparel will reduce skin abrasion and impact injury. This can mean riding home under your own power after a minor fall rather than being transported in the back of an ambulance.
All The Gear All The Time (ATGATT)
There’s an acronym floating around called ATGATT (All The Gear All The Time). The gear we are talking about includes a helmet, sturdy jacket, sturdy long pants, and full-coverage gloves and boots. By wearing ATGATT, you ensure that you are protected at the moment you need it most. Protective riding gear needs to be worn on every ride since you cannot possibly predict when a mishap will occur.
The good news is that motorcycle gear is better than ever in terms of style, comfort, and protection. Innovative features, such as modern waterproof and thermal liner systems and high-tech venting material, provide versatility. Most touring jackets now come with some sort of impact-absorbing armor in the elbows, shoulders, and knees for impact protection.
Another important piece of protection is a back protector. Rigid back protectors can prevent a sharp object, such as a footpeg, handlebar, or tree branch from doing serious damage. Back protectors are effective in shielding the spine and internal organs, as well as in distributing bone-crushing forces over a larger area. This type of force is common when landing on pavement after being flung skyward during a highside crash.
In the racing world, more and more competitors are choosing a higher level of protection not often used before, such as chest protectors, neck braces, and even airbag suits. These protective systems will become the norm as technologies improve and as top professionals begin to use them more often.
Comfort and Style
It may seem silly to don full gear when the thermometer rises above 90°F (32°C), but crashes happen whether it’s 40°F (4°C) or 100°F (38°C) outside. You can bet that skin abrasion injuries are greater during the hottest days of the year when t-shirts and lightweight pants are the norm.
Fortunately, there are mesh jackets that provide decent protection while flowing a lot of air, and these jackets also feature sturdy material in vital places. The same manufacturers also offer riding pants for hot weather that can be worn over shorts or jeans while providing decent protection. And consider that sometimes it’s just too hot to ride, so it may be best to leave the bike in the garage if the conditions are such that wearing decent protection risks hyperthermia.
The type of protective riding gear people wear is a personal choice that should be based on risk acceptance and awareness, but more often is based on style and peer pressure. It may be tempting to wear only what is fashionably acceptable by your peers even though it offers little protection. Fortunately, several helmet and riding apparel manufacturers sell protective gear that complements all styles.
RIDING TERM
CE
Protective gear sold in Europe must conform to the “CE” standards for effectiveness in absorbing impact energy and resistance to abrasion.
Get Seen
Choosing a particular style of riding gear can help you be more visible, such as high-viz yellow or wearing a brightly colored reflective vest over your existing jacket. For the most conspicuity, buy gear with small add-on lights that mount either on a helmet or in the middle of a jacket’s upper back. Most can be programmed for steady luminescence or strobe.
Don’t want to look like a highway worker or a Christmas tree? Then choose a brightly colored jacket, like red. I know that most riders will choose black over safety colors. There is no law against that choice, but just know that you won’t be as visible to other drivers, especially in low-light environments.
Not Convinced?
Still on the fence about whether you want to spend money on good riding gear? Consider this: our body will succumb if there is an accumulation of several relatively minor injuries. That means that a serious case of road rash might be too much for your body to handle if it also has to deal with broken bones and a concussion. That’s why protecting your body from even relatively minor injury can save your life.
And if you think you’ll be okay without full protection because you’re just riding around town at “slow” speeds, consider how you’d react if I asked you to go out into a parking lot in your shorts and tank top, run as fast as you can, and dive onto the pavement. You’d likely tell me to get lost. Even if I offered you money, you’d likely walk away. Now, imagine how it would feel to fall while unprotected at 30 mph (48 kph)—not good.
In the racing world, competitors wear the highest level of protective gear.
No Panacea
We’d all love to think we can prevent death or serious injury simply by zipping on a sturdy jacket and strapping on the most expensive helmet we can afford. But the reality is that many deaths occur despite a rider wearing all the best gear. After all, elbow, knee, back, and shoulder armor is no match for a truck or tree. And no helmet made can withstand the impact of more than 300 G, which is a problem when a direct impact