Modern Vespa

Talking with a biker who was wearing shorts and high boots, he claimed that denim will do nothing for you in a fall and it can make road rash worse by sometimes getting rubbed into the wounds! If it's not leather or Kelvar, he says, it might as well be shorts..!

Thinking about this, I recall a fall I had last year just walking. I tripped over a sidewalk jutted up by a tree root, and went down hard! My leather-gloved hands broke my fall, but the only damage was just some scrape marks on my gloves even tho my hands hit the ground hard enough to be throbbing afterwards!
But my denim clad-knee, which I felt just hit the concrete lightly, was torn and scraped. The denim just ripped apart like paper, and I had a large painful burn-rash on my knee for weeks!

So maybe shorts (and boots) are not quite as foolhardy as some might think? (Especially if you're not wearing leather or Kelvar armor!)
??

you cant get leather I have known guys bucket racing( little bikes around kart track) use two pairs of jeans.
On a regular basis no thanks.
Even good overtrousers can make a sacrificial layer and help on the street this is for abrasion not impact.

Denim will last the first two yards of a 100yard slide... Do not be a human crayon.

I wear these, i am sure that they are not perfect and i have not tested them out (thank god) but i would hope that they offer me some protection should i need them. They are kevlar lined jeans:

http://www.draggin.co.uk/

draggin' jeans the way to go. knox armor is "kick ass" as well.

good stuff....

I wear those too - and have had one off that proved their worth. The denim was scrap - the Kevlar held, and what would have been a huge scrape of flesh off my left knee was merely a small friction burn which subsided in less than a week.

Cotton denim has superior abrasion resistance against butterflies, spit wads, bird poop, marshmallows and harsh language.

TRUE.

I think that denim does help a bit if you have a low speed accident and don't slide much at all...

Which means it probably helps newbies more,
since they are the most likely to have this sort of accident

I wouldn't think it matters much if you are new or have been riding scooters since the sixties.

I picked up a pair of Fox knee/shin guards. I almost always wear them if I don't have my riding pants on. I bought them after seeing a biker in shorts and realized that I had almost as little protection on by wearing just denim. My hips are still naked and would undoubtedly take a beating in a fall but I have much more confidence just by wearing the guards. I've worn them several times for 8+ hours and don't even notice them any more.



Dave

Maybe you could wear pants and knee/shin guards?

What? and hide the naughty bits???


Dave

Didn't help me not one bit when I fell and brushed my knee on a sidewalk while WALKING! Damn jeans just split open at the knee like they were made of paper!

I think I'm gonna look into those Kelvar chinos... 8)

Good one Ted.

Dang!!
Yet another beautiful theory shot down by pesky facts!

Only problem is, I can't find the Draggin chinos here in the USA!! They have the jeans, yes, but I can't find the chinos (which I prefer) listed anywhere on the web except in Europe and Australia.. Arrrgh!

I was also looking all around for info on Kevlar Jeans/Pants the other day and found these. They are NOT Draggin, but a similar type called Sliders. I only know them from reading about Kevlar jean stuff on the Webbike world site where they reviewed a few pairs of these kinds of jeans. But they are their chino type pants.

http://www.compacc.com/prod.cfm/cid/1001002/pid/16615

Got myself some Alpinestars reinforced jeans and I love 'em. Very comfy and durably built. Removable armor in the knees... If you like the feel of jeans but want a little more when you ride, the reinforced jeans are a great option.

I'll preface what I have to say with a simple fact. I'm a polyamide-nylon-and-CE-rated-armor-wearing kind of guy. In fact, I've got a closet full of leather too. However, I've not always been particularly well off, nor have I always had quite as safety-conscious an outlook on motorcycle safety.

That all being said...I personally have gone down on the beltway, and slid 8 or 9 car lengths wearing calvin klein jeans, a jean jacket, leather gloves and my helmet. My jeans had a small slice on it where my house keys had ground through. The left elbow area had a small tear, and I had a bruise on my elbow. With the exception of nearly severing my pointer finger on my right hand on the brake lever, I was not much worse for wear, really. I'm not saying it's particularly prudent, or that it would turn out this way every time. But that's one datapoint to chew on.

I still wear those jeans every now and then.

This is similar to the "reasoning" many people use to justify not wearing helmets or other protective gear.

Denim is very poor protection. It is certainly better than nothing. Cotton (of which denim is made) is quite nice and soft compared with any road surface in existence. If anything is going to get "rubbed into" my skin, I'm always going to vote denim over asphalt. By the argument above, denim should be far preferable to Kevlar since the latter is quite abrasive in its own right. A Kevlar thread will but through your skin much more easily than a cotton one. Why, then, are aramids such as Kevlar preferred? They don't rip easily, preventing bare skin from contacting pavement.

Yes, abrasive forces can be transmitted through denim without ripping the cloth. We probably all remember "skinning" a knee through jeans that didn't rip. I seriously doubt ANYONE has done that when falling on some nice, moss-covered loam, though. We all did it falling on something hard.

I have never in my medical career seen any wound that I thought was worse because someone was wearing denim than it would have been if their skin had been bare. (I'm not counting injuries caused by cloth in the first place, such as getting a trouser hem or sleeve caught in something, cloth catching fire, unzipped jacket flapping over someone's face and blinding them, etc.) How about any other physicians, nurses, EMT's, etc?

Draggin USA and the original Draggin from Australia are now different companies that make and sell different products. One is not a sibsidiary of the other so they neither one imports and sells the others products.

only good thing about denim is that it does not melt.

be wary of plastic clothing (unless they are designed for motor bike use) as it melts into the gravel rash, making the job of cleaning and recovering that little more slow and a lot more painful!

(I was a bum-wiper in a past life - used to work in an ED)

Denim no, but try wool.

Seriously.

I often wear either a real wool sweater or a wool cardigan and have yet to put a tear into it. And I've gone on some good fallen downs.

From Wikipedia...
Wool possesses much greater ability to return to its natural length after being stretched than any artificial fiber. (this would include Kevlar)

Wool fibers are hygroscopic. This means wool has the power to readily absorb and give off moisture. It can for instance, absorb moisture up to one-third of its own weight. Synthetic fibers can only absorb 2-3 per cent of moisture before they begin to feel wet.

Wool is harder to ignite than most synthetic and cotton fibers used in equivalent products (higher ignition temperature); it has lower rate of flame spread; low heat release and low heat of combustion; doesn't melt or drip; forms a char which is insulating and self-extinguishes; and contributes less to toxic gases and smoke

I realize most climates won't find the heat retention of wool very attractive. At least they won't see you sweat.

I also realize woolen pants have really fallen out of fashion lately. Great bargains are found in vintage clothing retailers. You can even find plaid and argyle designs in wool.

But as far as motorcycle safety, leather, Kevlar and wool fibers are resistant to shredding and tearing and compared to denim far superior.[/i]

Optimist.

Thick denim at low speeds will work. I went down at about 20 mph about 2 years ago and did the wide world of sports slide for about 5-10 feet. Fractured my knee, but no road rash. I had on Levi 501 jeans - not an advertisement, it's just what I was wearing,, I still wear them when riding (the same pants). I had on a thick cotton long sleeved shirt also - my arm was "burned" a little from friction from the slide, but no bleeding road rash or road debris in the "burn" area - and the shirt held together.

At 50+MPH, well, maybe shorts are the same as demin at those speeds, I wouldn't know.

I can attest to that.

My big fall so far, I was only wearing jeans. I rolled, but didn't really slide, and while I don't necessarily credit the jeans with keeping me from road rash, they were intact until the paramedics came to chop up my clothes. They didn't help any, though, as I was laying on top of a sun-baked metal manhole cover in the middle of the street. Had a burn mark on my hip for months after that.

That said, I think I'll add some Draggin' jeans to my closet right after a new armored jacket.

One reminder: Energy carried ( that has to be dissipated by friction ) is proportional to the CUBE of the speed.
So, slow: little burn. A little bit faster: big burn.

I just picture my skin as a brake pad.

Joe Rocket has a product called "Steel Jeans". Similar to the Draggin Jeans but it has steel mesh. I have a pair, don't know how it compares to others. I do know they get really uncomfortable once you start sweating.