Is ATGATT overrated?

Ouch!:eek1


Andy...............................ATTGAT fan.

I'm admittedly a most of the gear all the time guy. I always have a helmet, jacket, gloves, but am not 100% on the actual riding pants and boots. Any trips or longer rides, I always have those on as well.

It's all about acceptable risk for me. I don't ride with sandals and shorts ever, but I'm ok with riding down to the store in levi's and tennis shoes. I don't go riding the canyons in them though. I realize I could do better, but I'm ok with not being 100% perfect about it.

I have a $400 dollar head. When I rode off road I wore all the gear but on the street I wear what ever I feel comfortable in. Sometimes its a mesh jacket, jeans and boots. If its hot and I'm not going far I'll wear shorts and a Tee. I've been riding for over forty years and haven't gone down on the street yet so naturally I feel invinceable. I think if I had one them there rocket bikes I would wear full leathers because it would be just a matter of time until I bit the big one.........If someones wants to wear all the gear or no gear at all, more power to them. The important thing is to ride and occasionaly wave.

My only issue with ATGATT is that for those of us who aren't just hobbyists but use our bikes for transportation, all that gear is incredibly cumbersome. If I'm meeting friends for dinner, I'm not gonna wear textile pants.

I swear by my mesh jacket, though. IMO, some mid-cuffed boots, a mesh jacket, full face helmet and gloves is plenty of protection if I'm bopping around town.

How did I ever survive to 50+.





Now that broken and battered parts don't heal so fast:

but walking into a nice restaurant in the squeaky boots is part of the fun

Not that this is a secret to any of us, depends on the situation. Tee Bone a pick up truck at 50 Mph, well your dead gear or not. Low side on your own and not hit anything I am thinkin you be dam glad you agatt instead of jeans and a tee shirt.

That said I think there are some stupid things on both sides. One of my favorites is after an accident were someone tells of the doctor saying to them "if it weren't for the gear you would be dead". That's . Cause less that Doctor went and and took detailed measurement/reconstructed the accident and made calculations of the forces involved to even hazard that type of guess, it is just .

Human beings aren't always logical and consistant, I am no different. Some times I wear all the gear sometimes I don't.

I ride as much as I can, with the season being so short here in Alberta - to/from work, errands, pick up pizza, just to ride, and long distance trips.

My usual gear is:
Aerostich
AlpineStars WebGoretex boots
Motoport Kevlar gloves
Schuberth C3 helmet

On occasion I also wear a TourMaster jacket and pants, and whe I'm feeling like being more "stylish", I'll wear Bohn Underarmor under jeans.

One of the reasons I got my Aerostich was that it's so easy to put on over street clothes and easy to take off. For the last few months, except for winter, I commuted to work - Aerostich over dress pants and shirt, carried shoes and jacket. Same for meetings out of the office.

I can understand the reluctance to wear AGATT in the south where it can get frikkin hot, but it never gets that hot here!

BUT - to each his own, I fully support anyone's right to not wear anything protective on a bike. I choose to go AGATT.

Ian

I fight this battle daily. I've been riding for about twelve years and just had my first accident a few months ago, on a hack of all things. I flew across a sharp metal edge of a guardrail. I just happened to be wearing a Bilt Storm suit thag I bought two days prior. The jacket tool the impact of a shard of metal, keeping me from getting gutted. The leg armor saved my left leg from being snapped, albeit, I did get a little lasting nerve damage out of the deal. My leg likes to go numb on top of my shin, which is a small price to pay for walking away alive.

However, as summer looms, wearing all the gear is getting harder. I like to commute on the bike, but the morning uniform for first formation is shorts and a tshirt, with running shoes. Throwing on all the gear to legally ride on post, then getting it all off before formation, only to put it back on to ride to the shower, then off when I get there........

Yeah, you can see where this gets to be a pain in the arse and ends up costing me a lot of time.

I'm on the lookout for a set of armored mesh pants that zip all the way up the leg like my storm suit. That should make being ATGATT a little more reasonable.

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Is ATGATT overrated?


Not in my book.

In a slow spill I had, my Fox knee guards saved me from a permanent limp. Or possibly permanent disability.

My noggin has been kept intact on several occasions by Arai helmets.

Fieldsheer leathers let me walk away from a 45+mph lowside without a scratch.

MotoGP kangaroo leathers let let me walk away from a 80+ mph lowside and subsequent 100+ foot slide and tumble with a dime sized strawberry on my elbow.

I like gear. Lots of it.

I am with you Grreatdog.
I started out rarely even wearing jeans on my dirtbike as a kid let alone a helmet.
Back then, I healed fairly quickly after a crash.
Even in my early 20s, I wore little more than a helmet.
As I began to mature a bit, I started wearing helmet, gloves, jacket, jeans and work boots to ride in.
Through several crashes, I began to learn that jeans shred when run across an abrasive surface.
So these days, I am ATGATT. I feel more comfortable wearing full gear.
In fact, last spring at Road America for a race weekend, I was working on my brakes the night before in the paddock. I rode around the paddock starting to bed the new pads in and was in a pair of track pants and a t-shirt. I felt naked.

I too worry about blunt force trauma. No amount of gear would have prevented my 4 broken ribs that I was blessed with at Motorsports Park Hastings in 2009. Lucky turn 13...
But had this been on the street, had I crashed in the same manner, had there been no gear, I would have not walked away. I would have been ground to the skull on my head. My entire right side would have been shaved down pretty well.
Instead, I popped right back up and tried to pick my bike back up not even realizing I had hit my head hard enough to grind through the shell of my helmet. My leathers wear nicely scuffed but still usable and passed re-inspection.

Nowadays, I will ride with anyone. EXCEPT those who don't even wear a helmet.
It's your life and you can live it how you want to. But I don't want to be the one hold your brains in your skull while waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

As I have said for a few years now. Leather is far cheaper than skin grafts.

This one always makes me smile. This gal shouldn't be the ATGATT poster child. She should be the "don't do dumb shit" poster child. Every bit of that road rash could have been avoided by using some common sense.


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Seems like the Killboy Failure thread has generated a lot of spinoffs

I think I ride ATGATT but some would disagree.

I guess it depends what you mean by ALL THE GEAR. For example, I ALWAYS have jacket, full-face or flip-up helmet, gloves and boots. VERY occasionally, I will ride with trousers that are not armored (although it's probably been a year or more.)

I don't have a spine protector, other than the normal pads in my jackets. Often, I wear swat boots rather than "proper" motorcycle boots. Some people would consider that under-dressed. Some of my gloves don't have carpal protection, etc., either.

I'm not scared, I'm not anal, it's definitely not the image (anyone who knows me knows I have ZERO image consciousness.) I'm just in the habit of putting it all on as part of the same process that has me checking the tires and wheeling the bike out of the garage. Pretty much in the same way as you'd grab your keys, I grab my gear and helmet before I ride.

Excuses about temperature and humidity are pretty lame. Once you're moving, a mesh jacket is probably cooler than a t-shirt because it lets the air through while keeping the sun off your skin.

Hindsight and all that.

Only over rated if you dont fall off. Wear what you want, I dont care. But it's a bitch ending up on your hands and knees at 60 mph.

For the most part I wont say it's over rated, I will say it's your own business what risk you wish to take. Had a guy tell me my open face helmet was unsafe once, he was smoking a cig in his power ranger git up at the time.

Olympia Airglide pants would fit the bill. They aren't cheap, but they are very well made and feature the full leg zipper. I've got a pair and when I was commuting to school getting them on and off was a 30 second affair.

Definitely overrated. The only time I wear all the gear is track days, dirt riding, or adventure touring.

Usually wear a helmet, jacket, gloves, and boots but will ride in a t-shirt. Feeling the sun and wind on my skin feels great and that's why I ride.

Wear a $10 helmet if you have a $10 head...

Well there is only a little truth in that, the more expensive helmet will often be more comfortable, lighter, and will offer more protection, but even the cheapest DOT approved helmet will prevent over 90% of the blows that would be fatal if you were not wearing a helmet.

By all means wear a quality helmet, but the difference in protection between a $500 helmet and a $100 helmet is not 5 times greater. Realistically, you would be better off with the $100 helmet and the other $400 invested in boots, Kevlar jeans, jacket with chest and back protection and gloves.

And if you think it can't be done for $500 just check competition accesories.com, leather up, or CycleGear off the top of my head. :ymca

There is an important piece of this story that is missing!

"Back in the day", "gear" was rare, expensive and hard to get.

There were very few choices, most of it leather, and most of it very uncomfortable and expensive.

Even good motorcross gear was not available at every corner mortorcycle shop and of course there was no Internet to order from. I honestly did not even know some of this 70s gear existed until seeing it on the Internet years later!

The "gear" back than really could make the riding experience much less fun!

Today there is so much more gear to be had at reasonable prices that there should be little excuse to having it.

Its very easy today to have gear for every occasion and type of riding you plan to do that day. Sure you may not have the "perfect" gear for the best protection in all situations, but there is really no excuse to not have the most reasonable combo for that moment.

Hot? There are full mesh jackets and pants, fully vented textiles, etc etc. Even pants that zip into shorts for when you get off the bike. Low top riding shoes, boots, etc.


Don't want to look like a storm trooper? Kevlar lined jeans, plain looking boots, etc!


There are also so many people looking to get rid of good used gear that there really is no excuse for not having and using it.


FWIW, in 40ish years of being on bikes, the ONLY time I have ever been hit by a car was "just running around the block":eek1 Doing 15 mph and got hit by a lady turning into her driveway!! I had full gear on!

True enough. I kept my skin through my worst high speed asphalt crash on that same bike by pure dumb luck. It was a cold night and I just happened to be wearing a snowmobile suit when I hit the pavement at 55+.

Aside from my helmets, goggles and gloves that snowmobile suit was my only dedicated riding gear back then. Our local bike shops didn't sell anything but helmets, goggles, MX mouth guards, gloves and MX boots.

We wore what we had. Which wasn't much. My whole ensemble in that second picture cost less (adjusted for 30 years of inflation) than just my Shoei helmet cost in the first picture. Times have changed for the better in terms of gear.