It's a fact of riding that one day you're going to fall off your bike, and unfortunately you often have very little control about how it's going to happen. The saying 'dress for the slide, not the ride' is absolutely correct - no matter how hot it is, you should always take as many reasonable precautions as possible to keep yourself safe in the event of that 'slide'. The trouble is, falling off your bike has a habit of not always being just a 'slide', quite often it's a 'slide', then a 'splat', sometimes even forgoing the first stage if you're very unlucky.
Sliding is what abrasion protection is there for - it keeps your skin intact, and by sliding it also prevents you tumbling which could very quickly lead to even more injury. Abrasion protection is commonly leather, a textile such as Cordura, or potentially an aramid fibre in motorcycle jeans, and all high quality versions are very effective at their job. These materials inherently do not provide any protection from shock however, no matter how thick they might be, which is where armour comes in.
Impacts are probably the hardest thing to protect from in a motorcycle crash, but technology continues to improve, with more people walking away from crashes with a few bruises, that'd have otherwise seriously injured, even killed, them than ever before. Armour is there to disperse an impact so that the force given to your body is massively reduced, thus reducing the likelihood of injury. Ultimately, there is always going to be a limit to how much force armour can cope with - don't expect to run into a wall at 100mph and live to tell the tale, even with the best gear, but for when you hit something pretty hard at legal speeds it can be the difference between life and death.
As with a lot of motorcycle gear, you've got a wide variety of choices, from professional racing applications to commuting, along with the natural variance in price that comes with it. You'll find CE Level 1 or 2 armour is the stuff you want to go for, with Level 2 being the better of the two. CE stands for Conformité Européen, or European Conformity, and it's commonly seen as a very good benchmark for how protective armour is. The levels describe the amount of force that is transmitted through the armour from one side to the other, with the lower numbers obviously being better!
The second thing to consider with armour is its positioning. It is most effective when put on likely impact points; we're talking knees, elbows, shoulders and hips, alongside the chest and back. The armour needs to sit against these areas comfortably and securely, otherwise it simply won't do its job; it'll either drive you mad and you take it out, or it won't be in the right place to absorb an impact.
You'll find cheaper jackets and trousers will have less effective armour, but usually it is removable. This means you can upgrade to better versions, such as Dainese, D3O, RST or Spidi Level 1 & 2 armour. You'll find better gear will have armour like this already fitted, and can even include adjustment within the garment. These pieces of armour are typically limited to knees, elbows, shoulders and hips, although you can find back protectors in some jackets. You can even find armour shirts/trousers to wear under your existing gear, as well as armour that can be worn on the outside.
Dedicated back protectors are one of the things that are integral to the best protection available, but unfortunately one of the more overlooked items for the road rider. An effective back protector needs to be right up against your back, no matter what's happening to you, and integrated jacket back protectors simply can't quite offer that last line of defence. Dedicated back protectors are for those who are serious about their protection, and it's the reason why you won't find Dainese including back protectors in their jackets, because they simply aren't good enough in their eyes. You'll find chest protector is an optional extra in all cases, with it being an insert you put in as you zip up your jacket - again, overlooked by the road rider, generally because it's inconvenient to use in comparison to normal armour.
So if armour is great, and should be worn at all times, why not just ride head to toe in it? Unfortunately, as with all gear, there needs to compromise, and with armour it's the lack of flexibility. Abrasion protection is integrated into fabrics, so it can go anywhere on your gear, near enough. Armour isn't so lucky; it's inherently thicker so it's not possible to put it absolutely everywhere. Your helmet is probably the closest to the best impact protection you can get on a bike, but it can only be like that as your head is fixed shape; and the helmet's compromise is the massive hole in the bottom so you can actually put it on, along with its ability to only take one major shock before being replaced. Imagine walking around in a human-shaped crash helmet and you can see why armour is the way it is!
The current best solution that's appearing is the use of airbags in gear, this allows even more force to be absorbed without injury, but it does come with a price tag to match. Various manufacturers have launched their own versions of the technology, with some offering vests you can put over existing gear as a way to reduce the cost of adopting this highly effective tech.
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