Mesh makes me nervous.
There are different styles of mesh, from what I’ve seen. The A* mesh on my jacket is really thick, I think it’ll do a pretty decent job. But the mesh I’ve seen on some Joe Rocket jackets is thin!
All I know is I dont have mesh welding gloves. I have caught my knuckles by accident with a flap disk on an angle grinder with leather welding gloves and it hardly scuffed then, I also caught my knuckles the same way with just mechanics gloves… and I have a scar on my fingers to prove it.
Mesh anything isnt going to hold up to asphalt abrasions, for more than a few seconds skidding across it at low speeds. it just wont.
usually the mesh is in areas unlikely to see abrasion. most mesh pants ive seen have textile or leather on the hips, ass, knees, etc…
I want a pair of those new icon compound overpants (mesh w/leather) but theyre $$$
It seems to me like Icon is always getting shit on as not being good gear, yet everyone here is praising their body armor and pants. What gives?
Never had a problem with straps on mine while riding.
I imagine you’d have to have knees that are a little weird, or try walking in them for a while instead of riding and then they might start to chafe. If you can’t find them check stuff from forcefield, expensive but they seem like they’d do the job.
i was wearing the icon TiMaxx Mesh Jacket when i had my accident. It was chewed up a bit but not bad at all and not all the way through anywhere. But i probably wasn’t going faster then 40 and don’t think i slid far at all. so it probably wasn’t a good test lol.
but your right, most of the areas that you might think you would typically slide on are a full textile covering rather then a mesh. like the icon jacket’s back was not mesh.
personally, i’d be out there in a t-shirt or not riding at all if it wasn’t for mesh. just avoid polyester. Try to get actual Cordura fabric, supposed to be the next best thing to leather.
I just woke up and that’s how I read your post at first :rofl
Ordered my riding gear for this year
Leather only way to go.
Icon isn’t race gear by any means, but it’s great road gear. My jacket and pants are icon. I’d trust my jacket in any fall and the pants have already done right by me and are still useable.
Not going to hijack OP’s thread with a vid I just saw on the tube, rider was wearing helmet, riding jacket, but with normal pants and sneakers mostly due to he didn’t plan on crashing that day; but he did. Ankle mangled and pants ripped on contact.
It puzzles me even more than people who rides with absolutely no gear, as if they are telling themselves that they kind of care about the body but legs? meh, not so much.
“Jeans = protection” that is the advice people toss around. “Squids wear shorts and flip-flops but real riders wear sneakers and jeans”…
But in a crash on pavement above 20 mph jeans offer basically the same protection as shorts. And sneakers offer the same amount of protection as flip flops. In almost every accident I have seen the first thing that comes off are the sneakers.
I think it’s do to image and ignorance. I’ve been made fun of a few times buy local riders who only wear a helmet because I look like “buz light year” or “the blue ranger” to them. Movies perpetuates the image that bad asses ride motorcycles and don’t need gear. So the general populous see’s a full leather suit as stupid or over kill.
Examples:
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzIQg6Ly_Rw[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF9AC2Ce2ow[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0VFSyQKu6k&feature=related[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXfeHjGw7fk&feature=related[/ame]
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOQh_NwrBTc[/ame]
Now for the factor of Ignorance much like death most people tend to think a motorcycle crash wont happen to them till it is upon them. The whole I’m invincible mind set that is well rooted in most riders/ peoples Ego’s is hard to knock out of an ignorant persons head.
But as Oscar Wilde said “Common sense isn’t very common.” :Idiots
Exactly. When anyone go’s down with out the proper gear I don’t feel bad for them really. It’s like sex without a condom, you knock up a girl you don’t like because you don’t want to protect yourself now you have to live with the life changing out come.
I just had a epiphany.
If the repercussions for risk-intensive behavior (riding with no gear) were immediate (you start the bike and it falls over, or you crash at first intersection) nobody would even think of not wearing gear. But because it requires being able to weigh the risk (you may crash), and make a decision to do something that’s considered a cumbersome chore (buy and wear gear) a lot of people don’t. They are no different from animals who can be trained by Pavlov’s methods by using immediate punishment to condition a reflex, but don’t have a foresight to predict.
It’s Darwinian, really.