Motorcycle riding is fun. This makes it morbidly entertaining to purchase a bike and race down the highway or a meandering rural road, with the wind in your hair and speed in your mind. However, as fun as this may be, riding a motorcycle is incredibly dangerous. Many a reckless driver has lost their life or have been severely injured while riding. This is why buying protective accessories and wearing them is extremely important if you want to keep your body intact.
Accessories like body armor, leather jackets and helmets seem to be a fashion statement among “hardcore” bikers, a stereotype perpetuated by movies and media. However, these motorcycle accessories are more than used for fashion; these are essential to keeping a biker’s body protected from accidents. Here are some things you need to know about motorcycle accessories and why they are important.
Getting ahead of yourself
It is extremely important to keep your cranium protected at all times. Your cranium holds your brain and the top of your spinal cord, and your motor functions could be seriously damaged if anything happened to them. Thus purchasing a good helmet along with any other motorcycle parts is a must.
The helmet must be snug enough to cradle your chin, cheeks, and the sides of your head. It’s also a good idea to purchase a new helmet instead of a secondhand model, as previous crashes might have weakened old helmets. Old helmets might also be molded themselves to their old owners, making them unfit for your own head.
Battle-ready armor
It’s also important to protect your body from skidding and road rash. Road rash is simply the collection of gashes you get from sliding through rough concrete. Aside from being extremely painful, road rash can be a source of serious infection, so you should do what you can to avoid being injured.
Body armor worn under your clothes can be a great way o stay protected after a fall. Leather jackets are also worn by many bikers, partly for fashion, and partly because leather doesn’t scrape along concrete the same way other fabrics do, minimizing the risk of you tumbling down concrete. Leather might not be your style, but it is important for protection.