[url=http://motorbikewriter.com/motorcycle-gear-fails-abrasion-tests/]This is an interesting piece quoting research that a great deal of the motorcycle safety clothing sold in Australia isn't up to much. Unfortunately it doesn't tell us which gear is good, but I'll leave the discussion about that to the sceptics in the comments section of the article.
I agree with the researcher that a trustworthy rating system for helmets and gear would be a good thing for consumers. After all, the only way you're going to find out if your kit is up to it is when you have to test it. It might be a bit late then.
Good research but, as you state, it would much more useful if it had a list of the gear they tried in their testing and how it fared. I do like her [url=https://infrastructure.gov.au/roads/safety/publications/2009/pdf/good_gear_guide_nrsc.pdf]GOOD GEAR GUIDE.
hmmm I was under the impression that one of the goals of 'CE' ratings was that very specific and quantiative tests are performed on the various kinds of gear and that CE rated gear had to pass these tests...
It seems like that would fulfill a lot of the goal of being able to have some kind of confidence that a piece of gear is up to a certain standard (like the US 'DOT' and 'Snell' standards for helmets) ?
Of course meeting these standards is no guarantee of safety, but it does throw in some objectivity ?
I think that the CE rating only pertains to impact resistance, not abrasion resistance, but I could be wrong on that. I do not know of any standardized testing being done to determine abrasion resistance and I believe that testing and ranking would be very helpful.
I've harped on about this before, but there are independent testers in the UK who do interesting tests on helmets. [url=http://sharp.direct.gov.uk/home]Here and [url=http://www.crash.org.au/]here. They show that there's a fair bit of variation in helmets that meet DOT, Snell and other standards in a range of tests.
The actual effectiveness of helmets may be unrelated to the standards met or price of the helmet. 2004 I think, Motorcyclist ran some interesting tests of various helmets and concluded that two of the least expensive that were DOT approved only were the best at preventing brain injury. At that time, the Snell approved helmets tested were judged least effective because the Snell tests of that time required a high penetration resistance which meant the Snell approved helmets had harder shells which transferred more energy to the wearer in an impact. Motorcyclist lost advertising contracts with some helmet makers after that article.
Probably.. not probably, definitely.. the cheapest motorcycle gear you can buy these days far, far exceeds the safety of the motorcycle gear we had available when I started riding. My first helmet was an open face Buco helmet, my first jacket an army pea coat. I wore gardening leather gloves, jeans and work boots. Wool army sweater and wool scarf if it was cold. That was 1965. You could buy a leather jacket and gloves and boots but only at a Harley shop and they were expensive. About 1973 I could get a real Brooks or Bates leather jacket, real motorcycle boots and Olympia leather gloves (all unarmored of course). I think about 1977 or so I added Brooks leather pants and a Bell full face helmet. None of it armored, warm, or waterproof. I got my first armored gear about 10 years ago, and the armor padding felt so wierd I took it out of the jacket and just wore it without armor. Now I wear the armored gear most of the time, like 90 % of the time (except for gloves).. Still don't like the feel of armored gloves. Most of it is warm, waterproof (or at least water resistant) comfortable, attractive and protective. Riding gear has come a loooooong way in the last 50 years.