If you only read one article about gear: Difference between revisions

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This is perhaps the most important lesson about motorcycles (and cars): It is impossible to reduce your risk of collision to zero. You can make that risk very small, but it will always exist. That is why we wear riding gear: it protects us in that instant where circumstances coincide to separate bike from rider. When someone makes a mistake, the safety gear being worn can mean the difference between waking up sore the next morning and waking up in the hospital, or not at all. Note that it doesn't matter whose mistake we're talking about: the rider's, the SUV driver's, or the deer's. Any one of them can cause a serious enough problem that the rider is suddenly separated from her bike.

In a "typical accident" another vehicle does something to cause the motorcyclist to crash, and the motorcyclist then slides along the pavement until they come to a stop. Although there's not a clear breakdown of the kinds of injuries sustained, a lot of ~~damage~~ potential exists for abrasion damage. This is the scenario from which most safety gear is intended to protect.

In a "typical accident" another vehicle does something to cause the motorcyclist to crash, and the motorcyclist then slides along the pavement until they come to a stop. Although there's not a clear breakdown of the kinds of injuries sustained, a lot of potential exists for abrasion damage. This is the scenario from which most safety gear is intended to protect.

Safety gear is utterly useless unless you wear it, every single time you ride. You can't control when and where a collision happens. The time between the crash starting and you hitting the ground is on the order of tenths of a second, in which time you can't put on any gear you didn't happen to feel like wearing. There's a phrase used by many motorcyclists, ATGATT: All The Gear, All The Time. If you do that, you will have substantially increased your chances of surviving a motorcycle accident unscathed.

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 This is perhaps the most important lesson about motorcycles (and cars): It is impossible to reduce your risk of collision to zero. You can make that risk very small, but it will always exist. That is why we wear riding gear: it protects us in that instant where circumstances coincide to separate bike from rider. When someone makes a mistake, the safety gear being worn can mean the difference between waking up sore the next morning and waking up in the hospital, or not at all. Note that it doesn't matter whose mistake we're talking about: the rider's, the SUV driver's, or the deer's. Any one of them can cause a serious enough problem that the rider is suddenly separated from her bike.
-In a "typical accident" another vehicle does something to cause the motorcyclist to crash, and the motorcyclist then slides along the pavement until they come to a stop. Although there's not a clear breakdown of the kinds of injuries sustained, a lot of damage potential exists for abrasion damage.  This is the scenario from which most safety gear is intended to protect.
+In a "typical accident" another vehicle does something to cause the motorcyclist to crash, and the motorcyclist then slides along the pavement until they come to a stop. Although there's not a clear breakdown of the kinds of injuries sustained, a lot of potential exists for abrasion damage.  This is the scenario from which most safety gear is intended to protect.
 Safety gear is utterly useless unless you wear it, every single time you ride. You can't control when and where a collision happens. The time between the crash starting and you hitting the ground is on the order of tenths of a second, in which time you can't put on any gear you didn't happen to feel like wearing. There's a phrase used by many motorcyclists, ATGATT: All The Gear, All The Time. If you do that, you will have substantially increased your chances of surviving a motorcycle accident unscathed.