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

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A very common question among new motoryclists is, "What kind of riding gear should I get?" It's a really good question, and it shows that you're on the right track. Unfortunately, it's also hard to answer well, because everyone will have a different set of requirements for their gear.

A simple fact of life, faced by every motorcyclist (whether they acknowledge it consciously or not) is that motorcycles are unsafe. Being on two wheels, ~~they're~~ much less stable (able to resist tipping over) than cars. There's no safety cage around a motorcyclist protecting them from the outside world.

A simple fact of life, faced by every motorcyclist (whether they acknowledge it consciously or not) is that motorcycles are unsafe. Being on two wheels, bikes are much less stable (able to resist tipping over) than cars. There's no safety cage around a motorcyclist protecting them from the outside world.

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.

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 A very common question among new motoryclists is, "What kind of riding gear should I get?" It's a really good question, and it shows that you're on the right track. Unfortunately, it's also hard to answer well, because everyone will have a different set of requirements for their gear.
-A simple fact of life, faced by every motorcyclist (whether they acknowledge it consciously or not) is that motorcycles are unsafe. Being on two wheels, they're much less stable (able to resist tipping over) than cars. There's no safety cage around a motorcyclist protecting them from the outside world.
+A simple fact of life, faced by every motorcyclist (whether they acknowledge it consciously or not) is that motorcycles are unsafe. Being on two wheels, bikes are much less stable (able to resist tipping over) than cars. There's no safety cage around a motorcyclist protecting them from the outside world.
 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.