As there has been a lot of discussion on the forum recently relating to the wearing of protective clothing I thought I would share some observations I made during my two week holiday on the continent.
While away I visited Barcelona, Monte Carlo and Rome and a few other lovely locations. During the duration of my break the daytime temperature averaged 82F, 8-) so I’m sure you can imagine all three of the aforesaid cities were heaving with two wheeled traffic of which I have never seen the like before.
I estimate that 99 per cent of the riders of both genders were either wearing very little or no protective clothing at all, excluding helmets of course. A minority were wearing gloves. I counted hundreds of young girls in all 3 major cities, who were wearing thin tops, short skirts and flip-flops. I was sitting outside having a coffee in La Rambla, Barcelona when two big cc police scoots with sirens screaming, raced down the busy street at high speed. Both of the Spanish bike cops were wearing thin blue short sleeved shirts. At that moment I could not stop myself from making a comparison between the two contrasting attitudes between Europeans and Brits (Hi-viz vests national debate springs to mind) towards the wearing of protective clothing. Very interesting.