Защитная экипировка для мотоциклистов: современные требования и ограничения.

Protective clothing for motorcyclists
Motorcycle armor is body armor for motorcycle riders. It comes in a variety of forms, from traditional yellow foam to high tech compounds capable of absorbing large amounts of energy. In its basic form an armored jacket will include shoulder and elbow armor, and many jackets can have an optional back protector added too. Trousers should include hip and knee protection, and sometimes a coccyx protector too.

This armour is either closed cell or open cell foam and in various densities all the way up to a fairly hard foam used in helmets. Hard foams absorb impact/shock by destructive decomposition so they can only be used to protect for one incident and must be replaced. Soft foams offer little protection with close cell foams providing a bit more protection than open cell foams.

Of foam type armors, memory foam armor achieves a higher level of impact absorption compared to open/closed cell types above. Memory foam rebounds slowly after compression. It is a very dense foam.

These are gel type impact/shock absorbers. They are produced in various densities and generally used close to the body for comfort.

Hard armour usually consists of a hard plastic and is designed to resist abrasive and puncture injuries. Hard armour generally is used in conjunction with some impact absorbing foam or other material on the inner surfaces facing the body. This is because hard armour by itself does not provide impact/shock absorption qualities.

European Standard EN 1621 2:2003 They noted: "back protectors are unable to protect against most spinal injuries, which are caused by bending and torsional forces". More recent work by Afquir et al in 2019 found that "very few injuries linked to posterior anterior impacts could have been avoided by the use of back protection". They conclude that "the design of back protectors should be reconsidered to better protect riders from what is referred to as compression fractures (craniocaudal force), which remain the primary form of fracture regardless of the rider's characteristics."

Research has revealed limitations of the current standard of motorcycle armour. According to Albanese et al (2017), "The allowable transmitted force of EN 1621 1 may be too high to effectively reduce the probability of impact injury. This is not surprising, given human tolerance levels that are reported in the literature [ ] A reduction in the maximum force limit would improve rider protection and appears feasible". Additionally, Meredeth et al (2019) found that shoulder and knee armour need different levels of impact protection. And the CE standard for armour only reduced transmitted force to the shoulder by around 8% (± 5%). They concluded that: "distinct differences in injury protection performance observed between knee and shoulder impact protection indicate that there may be a need for different performance criteria for impact protection designated to protect different body regions".

Liz de Rome et al undertook a cross sectional study of motorcycle protective clothing and armour. It was described as "the first study in over 25 years to examine the effectiveness of specialised motorcycle protective clothing and in particular, body armour." The study found "a significant reduction in the risk of open wounds (abrasions, cuts and lacerations) associated with all forms of motorcycle clothing fitted with body armour, and for gloves and pants when body armour was not present. However, there was no evidence of a reduction in the risk of fractures associated with body armour for any area of the body."