The Complete Handbook of Motorcycle Pants

Chapter 1: Understanding Motorcycle Pants

A motorcycle pant is not a piece of clothing. It is a containment system for a human body operating in a high-energy environment, and its design is governed by physics, not fashion. When a rider falls, the pant is the interface between skin and the pavement, or between the leg and the impact point. Its two primary jobs are to manage friction and to manage impact. A secondary, but critical, job is to allow the rider to function without interfering with the operation of the motorcycle. Understanding how a pant achieves these functions is the difference between buying a product based on a logo and buying a product based on its engineering.

The first physical reality is abrasion. Asphalt is a form of sandstone. When a rider slides across it at speed, the pavement acts as a coarse grinding wheel. The force of friction converts kinetic energy into heat. Your skin cannot withstand this force; it will abrade away in a fraction of a second. The material covering your leg must be able to absorb this energy by fraying, tearing, or melting in a way that dissipates the force before the ground reaches your flesh. This is why the denier of a textile or the thickness of a leather is a primary specification. A thin cotton denim pant may survive a five-mile-per-hour slide in a parking lot, but it will disintegrate in less than second at highway speeds. A dedicated motorcycle pant is built with