Recently, I was watching a YouTube video of a motorcycle crash in the woods. I wondered about first aid on motorcycles.
What does a rider need to know about motorcycle first aid kits? Motorcycle riders need to know the following about their first aid kits.
- The injuries the kit will treat.
- The different first aid kits.
- What components are in the first aid kit.
- How to create their own motorcycle first aid kit.
DISCLAIMER:
This is NOT a substitution for medical attention or advice. For specific questions regarding your situation, contact a qualified medical professional. This is NOT medical advice.
Motorcycle first aid is more complicated than what you see on the table. You first need to dig into the kinds of injuries you may end up treating.
Motorcycle First Aid Kits Need To Treat These Injuries
If you were to group motorcycle injuries together, you would find they differ from other outdoor sports or recreational activities. Motorcycling covers a wide range of environments and conditions.
Here are the most common motorcycle injuries followed by a brief description.
| Common Injury | Common Cause |
| Sunburn | Not wearing sunscreen or protection from the sun |
| Heat Burn | Not covering your body or touching a hot part of the motorcycle |
| Eye Injury | Not wearing eye protection |
| Cuts and Abrasions | Multiple causes of cuts from a motorcycle |
| Fractures | Crashing a motorcycle |
| Sprained Wrist | Trying to catch a falling motorcycle |
| Sprained Ankles | Dropping the bike and using your legs to stand it back up |
| Road Rash | Not wearing proper gear and wrecking the motorcycle |
There many additional injuries the table does not cover. I meant it to give you an idea of what may happen. If it makes you think of other injuries, add them to your list. Make sure you have supplies in your first aid kit to help with the treatment.
I am not a doctor by any means and suggest you look at the Roadguardians site to learn how to deal with serious motorcycle accidents and injuries.
For this article let’s break each of these injuries down a little more.
Sunburn:
I think anyone who likes the summer knows what it is like to get sunburnt. It can hurt a little or a lot. The degree to which one gets burnt depends on how long you were in the sun and whether you had on protection.
This makes sense, so why should a biker have sunscreen in his first aid kit? I know I could have used it on several rides over the past 5 years. It would have been nice to put on even later to prevent my sunburn from getting worse.
As they say it is better late than never. You do not need a big bottle, but something that you can apply to your exposed body parts like your arms and face (if you do not wear a full-face helmet.)
Heat Burn:
At some point, every motorcyclist will burn a body part on the engine or exhaust. It will come when you least expect it and miles from anywhere to treat the burn.
As this happened to you? It has happened to me a few times. The worst was from a dirt bike accident when I was a teenager. I was riding in shorts and flip-flops of all things. The bike went down and the pipe ended up on my leg. Ouch!
Having something to help treat the burn in your first aid kit will be helpful.
Eye Injury:
Imagine riding down the road with no windscreen, eyeglasses, or a face shield. At some point, do you expect to get pelted in the face with debris? Heck, it still happens to me frequently and I have a windscreen with glasses on my face.
The point? You will end up with crap in your face during some point of your riding career. Bugs and road debris are the most common items from my experience. Riding off-road will get dirt in your eye as a buddy roosts you.
From all the research I completed, WebMD made had the best advice. Riders can easily add to their existing first aid kit.
First, make sure you have hand sanitizer. Even though the WebMD article calls for washing your hands, out on the road it is difficult sometimes to wash your hands. The next best thing is having hand sanitizer to kill off the germs hanging out on your fingers and palms.
The second addition will be eye drops or a small bottle of distilled water. This liquid will help wash out your eyes and take away whatever is lodged in your eyeball.
Cuts and Abrasions:
What would a first aid kit be without treating cuts, scrapes, and scratches?
Make sure you keep a nice selection of bandages in your kit. Personally, Superman bandaids always make my booboos feel better.
Don’t forget the healing ointment to provide some relief.
Pro-Tip: While not using your first aid kit is a good thing. Check the bandages in your kit several times per year. The movement and rubbing against other items can put holes in the bandage packaging exposing them to contamination. You may find older band-aids lose their adhesive properties. On the trail or far away from home is not the time to find out your bandages do not work.
Fractures:
No one likes broken bones, but on a motorcycle there is a strong possibility you will end up with one if you ride long enough. They hurt and can prevent progress on your journey and keep you from getting medical attention.
These types of injuries commonly occur when a motorcycle is wrecked or dropped. When the bike is dropped, the rider will try to “catch it” to prevent any damage to the bike, instead of letting it fall to the ground. Catching it is the worst thing to do.
Let the bike fall to the ground. This is the best way to keep all of your bones in tact.
Many possibilities exist can when wrecking a motorcycle. Riders commonly put their legs down in a stabbing motion to help prevent the bike from going down all the way. Yes, I stabbed my own legs and got hurt too. Not with broken bones, but with sore and straighten legs. This mainly happens on the Harley which weighs over 700 pounds.
Again, let the bike go down and learn how to exit (if possible) to prevent bone fractures.
Controlling Blood Loss
Fractures and other injuries commonly come with losing blood.
According to Fairview, one of the first things you should do is control the bleeding. Put gauze in your first aid kit. Have as much of it as you can. Check out the link for more information to control bleeding.
The article continues with the importance of having a splint and sling. We can make the splint from many things. Look around to see what you can find.
For the sling, use a shirt, towel, or belt.
Pro-Tip: Take the time to think about additional resources around you or on you that can help when first aid is needed. Thinking about these additional resources is not enough, write them down and put the list in your first aid kit. You will not likely remember these additional items in a moment of stress. The list will be a great way to help you focus and remember the resources at your disposal.
Sprained Wrists & Ankles:
So we just covered fractures and sprains happen in the same way as fractures. I will not go into the details again.
You should know these usually happen at slower speeds such as maneuvering around parking lots or heavy traffic.
I have found stabilizing the injured body part the best way to reduce pain immediately. Make sure you use the Pro-tip.
Road Rash:
For those of you who are new to motorcycling, you may wonder “what is road rash?” It is what happens to your skin after dragging it across the pavement.
You may have a disgusting picture in your mind of how this looks. You are correct; it is not pretty.
Again the cause is wrecking a motorcycle. While you cannot eliminate road rash, you can reduce its outcome by wearing proper riding gear. This means pants, boots, and a jacket.
Gear can get expensive, but spending a little here can save lots in medical bills later.
Take the time to research and purchase some good equipment.
Different Styles Of Motorcycle First Aid Kits
It quite surprised me while doing research for this article and for my kit. There seems to be two kinds of first aid kits you should consider. The first is a life-saving kit, the second is more like a comfort kit.
We will get into the details and differences between the two, but know upfront you will most likely end up with a comfort style of kit. And this makes sense considering the abilities of most writers in administering first-aid.
In fact, I would highly encourage riders spending large amounts of time away from populated areas to consider taking a first aid course. They and other riders will enjoy the knowledge and expertise developed through the course.
Life-Saving Kits
Let’s first talk about the life-saving first aid kit. We also know these as a personal injury kits, blow out kits, tactical kits and trauma kits.
Within them, you will find things that can literally help a person stay alive. While researching this article I found the following information. So check out the link.
The article points out this kit is the utmost importance especially for motorcycle riders. I however have a differing opinion.
It seems when you consider the reasonable equipment contained in a life-saving kit there will be little if any room left on the motorcycle.
The article goes on to list many things that are part of the kit. It also discusses balancing the life-saving aspect with a comfort aspect which I agree with. We’ll talk more about the comfort aspect in a few moments.
The Real Life Saving Component Of Motorcycle First Aid
While we are talking about life-saving first aid, let’s talk about the most important piece of equipment that we know has repeatedly saves lives.
This is the communication device to which you will use to let the outside world know you are in distress. Most riders refer to this as their GPS unit which provides a text to a reporting agency.
These units can also send automated updates to family and friends to let them know you’re safe. For most riders, it is the first line of defense and bringing in help when it is needed the most.
I remember listening to a writer in a recent podcast of Adventure Rider radio talk about how the Spot X unit really did in fact save his life. He had a heart attack out on the trail, used the device to call for help, and taken to receive immediate care.
Without this device the rider would have died. And wouldn’t you rather have trained medical professionals with top-level equipment coming in taking care of you versus trying to administer First Aid on a fellow writer or yourself?
In fact, the Spot X will be a unit I consider for myself not only for motorcycling but for backpacking. The unit seems reasonably priced at roughly a few hundred dollars and the ongoing service was less than $100 a year. WHAT A BARGAIN WHEN YOU CONSIDER THE IMPACT IT CAN HAVE YOUR LIFE!
You can see that perhaps I am a little biased, but I should be with my life.
If you do not use this unit, then please use something that brings in professional medical help if an emergency happens.
Comfort First-Aid Kits
This kit will have things we’ve already discussed like Band-Aids aspirin or ibuprofen, sunblock, ointments, gauze, and splints.
We will talk more about what goes in to the kit in a moment.
A comfort kit will allow the ride to deal with most situations right on the trail. And the comfort kit will be small enough and compact to not take away room for other items.
Buying Your Motorcycle First Aid Kit
The easiest and quickest thing to do is just buy a motorcycle first aid kit or you may consider a backpacking first aid kit.
You will find more of the ladder because of the remote nature of backpackers. Most motorcyclists do not leave their town or go to remote areas. This makes a backpack first aid kit a good replacement.
You should know these kits can be expensive. They can cost anywhere from 20 bucks to a few hundred.
Life-Saving First Aid Kits
I found this life-saving medical kit on motosport.com. If you check it out, you’ll find that there are many things that you might find at a hospital or emergency care room.
Upon reading the description I would encourage only those individuals who have had professional first aid training to carry this kit. Otherwise using the equipment on yourself or a fellow writer could make the situation worse. Remember what I said about the Spot X GPS tool? If you are in that bad of a situation that’s when it comes in handy.
This kit is exceptionally handy when writing in groups where one person who has had the professional aid training.
Comfort-Care First Aid Kit
Here’s a first aid kit where you would expect to find Comfort items and what you would expect a rider to have.
Notice this kit seems to be designed for families, but there is no reason that motorcycle riders can’t use them.
The one caution I would give anyone who buys this kind of kit, some items may be lacking. Specifically big roles of gauze and tape.
What is a rider to do if they need something in between these two kits?
They should create their own. To do this, the rider needs to think about what she wants to treat.
I suggest looking back on your riding career and write all the times you can remember where a first aid kit would have been nice to have. If you had one, was there something you would have changed in your kit?
For new riders, take the time to forecast the situations where you will need a first aid kit.
Now that you have a list of times when you need a first aid kit, what items do you need to have in your kit?
Look around your house and see what you can find. Go buy the rest of the items.
First Aid Kit List
For those who want to built a kit, but do not know where to start, here is a list to get you moving.
You should add or remove items based on what you need. No one else will know as much about your needs than you. Know it will take sometime as you get out there and ride.
Your experience will tell you and to add or remove.
| First Aid Kit Item | Helps Treat… |
| Sunscreen | Sunburn |
| Eye Drops | Eye injury |
| Small Bottle of Water | Eye injury, clean a cut |
| Small Gauze | Small Cuts |
| Big Gauze | Larger cuts and burns |
| Medical Tape | Helps keep gauze in place |
| Burn Gel Packets | Burns and blisters |
| Ibuprofen | Reduces pain |
| Small Scissors | Cuts tape and gauze |
| Alcohol Wipes | Cleans cuts and injuries |
| Tweezers | Pull out splinters and ticks |
| Latex Gloves | Keeps you from infecting others while treating them |
| Antiseptic Wipes | Keeps your hands sterile |
Get out there and go for a ride. Be safe.