There’s a bit of a battle going in British motorcycling. No, I’m not talking about aging ex-MotoGPer Scott Redding trying to reclaim former glory by stealing the British Superbike championship from Kyle Ryde (though he is doing himself proud by running second in the world’s most competitive superbike series). It’s not even the British Motorcycle Action Group fighting to get local bobbies to up their battle against motorcycle theft (which is truly a plague in the U.K.). 

Instead, it’s an internecine war between the United Kingdom’s two premier motorcycle gear gurus — actually, given their global reach, perhaps the world’s two premier gear gurus — Motolegend’s Chris “the chap in the cap” Chapman and BikeSocial’s John Milbank. Both are, in British vernacular, slagging each other. Milbank has called out Chapman on YouTube while the Cap Chap has trolled Bike Social’s consumer editor on Motolegend’s immensely popular newsletter. It’s huge fun.

And deadly serious. 

That’s because the subject of their quarrel is motorcycle safety garments. Or, more accurately, the European CE rating system that has become the de facto global standard by which motorcycle safety gear is judged. Milbank thinks its ratings are bona fide while Chapman derides them as a scam. Whatever the case, they’ve been going at it like Marquez and Rossi at Sepang in 2015.

For those that don’t understand what the hubbub is all about, here’s a (hopefully) brief refresher. The “CE” tag you find in most jeans, trousers and jackets (as well as gloves and boots) stands for Conformité Européenne, and is basically a system created to combat the plague of fake riding gear. The rating systems it provides are fairly simple. Jackets and pants (and that’s all we’re talking about today) are awarded one of three ratings —
A, AA or AAA — with triple-A being the safest.

For the tests it does certify, the CE’s EN17092 rating system is quite thorough. First amongst them is abrasion. In this test, a garment is subjected to a whirling dervish of high grit sandpaper at various speeds. Essentially, the higher the speed it can endure, the higher its rating. It’s an easy presumption — and, in this, the two have no argument — that the higher the rating, the longer you can slide on your ass before it comes in direct contact with asphalt. There are also tests for seam and tensile strength, but they too test whether said pants or jacket will remain intact when faced with the stress of sliding along on said ass. For the sake of brevity, then, let’s stipulate the current CE ratings handle the sliding part of a get-off fairly adroitly.

Where the controversy starts — and the trolling begins — is with armour. Now, you might remember that the CE system also rates leg, shoulder, knee, hip and back protectors. Both Level 1 and Level 2 certifications are offered, two being the most protective. The weakness in the CE overall ratings — again, those A, AA, or AAA tags for your jackets and pants — is that a pair of pants can be “A” rated with only armour in the knees. And while both AA- and AAA-rated jeans require both hip and knee armour, they only need be Level 1. Meanwhile, a jacket can be CE AAA-rated with elbow and shoulder pads only; certification for jackets does not require back protectors of any kind, either Level 1 or 2.

And then there’s size. Both Level 1 and 2 limb protectors are available in two sizes, Type A being the smaller and Type B being the larger. Obviously, since B protectors cover more vulnerable areas, they are considered more protective. Even AAA garments can be had with the smaller protectors.

And this is where the two giants of British product testing get their shorts in a knot. While Milbank definitely advocates for larger and more protective Level 2 armour, he spends most of his time discussing — and all of his time testing — abrasion resistance. Chapman, on the other hand, thinks that armour protection is vastly more important, citing endlessly — perhaps ad nauseum — that AAA-level abrasion is only really necessary at racetrack speeds and that protection from impacts is much more significant for road riding. For his money, the height of protection for street riding is not an actual garment, but Rukka’s range of XTR D3O armour which is not only thicker — and presumably exceeding Level 2 energy-absorption abilities — but also much larger and therefore protect more of your vulnerable bone and ligaments.

Both are, of course, right. Indeed, the ideal is to maximize both. For what it’s worth, my go-to riding jeans are PMJ’s Deux. They’re AAA-rated but use flimsy Impactec Level 1 protectors which I’ve replaced with Level 2 Halvarssons (in the knees) and D3O Ghosts (in the hips). My other faves are Cycle Gear’s Reax 267s. Initially, I used them only sporadically because they were only AA-rated, but, when I determined their armour pockets could fit Rukka’s humungous Level 2 XTR knee protectors, I was sold. Besides, as Chapman says, even though they are not factored into a garment’s abrasion protection, such monstrous armour does offer some abrasion resistance in its own right. So, forget the controversy, the real lesson to be learned is that you want both abrasion and impact protection.