As many of you are aware, I had a pretty bed crash in Sept, 06 that put me in the hospital for several weeks with some pretty severe injuries, but what you may not be aware of is the fact that the Teknic jacket I was wearing saved me a lot of internal injuries. I wound up with several broken bones, head trauma (suffered a stroke), cracked vertebrae and ribs, a pretty much gimped up leg and some minor road rash among a few other things and a totaled Warrior. But what I didn't have, much to the amazement of the surgeons and my family was any internal injuries, such as bruised lungs, heart, broken or busted shoulders and elbows. I attribute a good deal of this to the gear that I was wearing, that being my Teknic jacket, a good pair of gloves and boots. Sadly they cut the Jacket off of me on the side of the road so I did not get to see how bad it was torn up, but from what I understand it was pretty much trashed. I tangled with a Ford F-150 and it won. Here's a link to the accident report on the site and another for the pictures, (no gore). Not to derail this thread but if you are thinking about a new jacket (Think Teknic) and no I don't work for them but their stuff works, trust me I know first hand.
http://rswarrior.com/forums/p/1354/22365.aspx#22365 the post about the crash
http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb36/CADFather/the%20crash/accident%20scene/ Crash pics
And some of me that I've had, while I was still in a coma;
http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb36/CADFather/the%20crash/hospital/
And finally a repost of one of the X-rays of my now gimped up leg;
http://s205.photobucket.com/albums/bb36/CADFather/?action=view¤t=Scan1.jpg
I hate to keep bringing these up, but it illustrates the value of gear.