Denim vs. Asphalt

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Unless I'm just roaming around up here at school, I'm usually wearing a pair of Wrangler Cowboy Cut Slim Fit Jeans.

Going down an old backroad the other day and the front-end of the Honda bike I was riding came out from under me (for you car guys, think understeer) due to a large amout of dense-grade gravel in a corner. Luckily, I was only going about 25 at the time, and although I had a couple "black and blues", the jeans suffered no damage except a small tear on the knee where it slid across the pavement...
 
i've been down (low side) at about 30~35 mph. ate up my leather jacket, broke my helmet, and chewed a couple small holes in my jeans. no major tissue damage. i had worse from falling at the playground.

still, i now do a lot of my riding in chaps and a jacket with lots of body armour.
 
I now street-ride with BDU pants that I've fooled around with. I had a local ballistic armor company sew Kevlar panels under the knee, hip, and shin panels of the pants. Its 3 layer, thin and flexible but will probably provide quite a bit of abrasion protection. Underneath the pants I wear Bohn/Knox armor pads in their Lycra carrier set-up. Allows good mobility and is fairly cool in hot weather. Carrier is machine-washable.

Club racing and track days-all dead cow skin
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I think it's a pretty good test. Although I think you took most things into consideration, weight, travel, ect.

Two things I think aren't terribly accurate though. If you look at the bag, the damage was a large area meaning the weight was pretty evenly distributed. Obviously our bodies aren't as conforming as sand, so we'd have pressure points, meaning more pounds per square inch doing a lot of damage.

The bag traveled 200 yards, which is a lot more then a person would travel. This means that the drag wasn't enough. Since the drag is what your trying to measure you'd want this to be much more accurate.

-T
 
i instantly busted a hole in my jeans and skinned up my knee on a 15mph low side in hard dirt. 190lbs going down on one knee is alot more pressure than 200 lbs over the entire bottom surface of the jeans.
you'd be more accurate testing it with the jeans on thier side sliding on one leg, as if you were sliding laying on your side.
another test would be the seat of the pants only, as if you were sliding in a seated position
one other test would be something to simulate a knee hitting first
one more test would be to throw the jean test piece down while traveling at a greater speed. simulating the falling effect, not just low speed sliding effect.
it is an interesting test though, i wear jeans when i commute
 
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