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Possibly heading to BPW with my son and thinking it might be prudent to get some sort of armour. I have a TLD 7850 padded shirt thing with shoulders but it’s not really a hard shell, and being a yoot, the lad probably wants just chest and back. The moto-x style fox roost guards look very moot-x, but are they a bit cumbersome. They also do a D3O vest with a panel in the chest and back.
Anyone tried and like a particular model, good deals to be had?
I appreciate that it needs to be comfy, but probably not doing a lot of pedalling in it.
I get so frustrated with my kid (12) asking for a plastic roost vest.. all the "cool kids" wear them so of course that's what he wants.. trouble is that in a decent high speed bike park crash - unlesss you're off for a simple penguin slide - I cant see them being much better than a chocolate fireguard.. and in a decent off with rotations, that could be weeks, or the whole season off the bike.
I put him in exactly what you have, the youth 7850 vest. yes soft padded, but shoulders, collar bone, ribs, kidneys, chest, spine and all the other upper body and core bits are covered. He can complain all he wants, but its a pretty darn good bit of kit.
He needs to size up though and I'm thinking of going the RF flank core route, but its still missing some key protection points for lift assisted riding (Whistler season pass in his case). Might be a halfway house that in addition to impact shorts is a reasonable compromise - depending if adult small works
(FF, knee pads, elbow pads and a neck roll are also mandatory for him)
I'd focus on the back- chest protection is really, really difficult to do for bikes, the chest injuries we tend to get are pretty much momentum injuries ie it's your own weight that hurts you more than the thing you hit, and the only way to reduce those is lots of padding, which nobody actually wants to wear. Penetrating chest injuries are incredibly rare, and the amount of protection we can realistically wear still struggles to deal with that. TBH even serious back injuries are very rare but the flipside is they're massively easier to protect against.
Can't recommend a current model though, I'm out of date.
I use a Leatt 3df airfit thing under a jersey.
worth every penny I have found