Safety Gear from Head to Toe – Hands

Safety Gear from Head to Toe 

~ HANDS ~

This month, we’re focusing on safety gear for your hands/gloves. This article is part of a broader series exploring safety gear and the latest technology, starting from the head and continuing down to the toes. You are encouraged to share your thoughts, recommendations or favorites in the comments. Please remember that these articles are based on my opinions, experiences, and research gathered from the vast depths of the internet.  

To be honest, gloves are definitely a piece of gear I struggle with wearing unless the weather is unkind to bikers. I have small hands, and even the small and extra small sizes never seem to fit comfortably. This isn’t just an issue with riding gloves—it’s a problem I have with all gloves. I remember one of my first group rides, a cold fall color ride with my HOG chapter, when I wore a pair of ski mittens made with Gore-tex on top and leather palms. Can you guess why this wasn’t a good idea? I stuck my hand up in the air to signal the single-file formation and realized how useless my mitten hand was for communicating with the other bikers. After that, I installed heated grips.

When it comes to gloves, there aren’t many options or advances in technology. The main development is heated gloves, a technology that’s been around long enough to offer many options, some at fairly reasonably priced. Some even plug into your jacket. Besides the heated feature, your choices boil down to long vs short, leather vs synthetic, or a combination of both materials. Of course, gloves have small features like different types of closures, thicknesses, or stitching. Typically, the higher the cost, the better the quality and protection.    

While researching, I watched several videos and saw many pictures of gloves after crashes. Many of the survivors were generally happy with the gloves they wore. Their hands fared better in areas where the gloves were thicker or reinforced with armor, while weaker areas of the gloves showed more damage.  As for the photos of those with fingerless gloves or no gloves, well, those hands didn’t fare well at all. Most people don’t have much meat on their hands, and when you fall, your instinct is to put your hands out to protect yourself. If you crash without protection on your hands, you will grind down to bones very quickly.  

What did I personally learn from researching this article? I need to find my happy medium—a pair of gloves that allows me to feel my controls without irritation, but as thick as I can handle. From now on, I will be wearing gloves. 

Remember that you can wear all the best gear, but crashes still happen.  Be ready with Accident Scene Management training and a trauma pack. The more of us trained, the better off we will all be!

Click –>  to read my earlier articles –>   HEAD     NECK     ABDOMEN

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I hope you have safe travels!

Doris

Road Guardians Team Member