There's street gear and there's track gear. Although there is some overlap there's also some divergence.
With track gear, tight leather is the norm, with articulated boots. Although one is comfortable on the bike, walk-around comfort is not a consideration (nor should it be).
With street gear, most riders take what looks cool and is comfortable enough to walk around. Hence, leather jackets and jeans are common. In practice this is a terrible getup because jeans won't help in a crash.
An Aerostitch suit is simply the most practical item one can wear for the street. Faster to take on and off than even a leather jacket, it affords upper and lower abrasion protection. However, I only see me and a very few BMW long-distance riders use it (in NoCal, though, it seems 1/3 of the riders use it, go figure). If you're not going above 90 mph then the nylon Aerostitch will not burn through during crashes.
In comparison tight-fitting leathers will look barely scuffed at 90 mph crashes. I've seen Vanson leathers crashed at 110 whereby the suit didn't even looked scuffed--the color become lighter but the leather itself didn't even scuff. Even the cheaper leathers like AGV, if they fit tightly, will look barely scuffed at most racetrack speeds.
Gloves, though, seem to fall apart no matter what speed one crashes at. They blow apart at the seems but usually they save the rider's hands. My brother, for example, experienced a very nasty crash where the gas tank trapped his hand between it and the road. Although his pinky finger was broken he did not suffer abrasion.
My feeling is that metal as protection is a terrible idea. Metal doesn't have much abrasion resistance and its tendency to dent makes it a poor protective material.
In practice, bikes require so much gear that I usually end up taking the car. It's a lot faster than suiting up.
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