Crash bars look good on Royal Enfields, but not mine

Diamond Engine Bar, available at Nfield Gear.

You see a lot of these on Royal Enfield motorcycles. Motorcyclists around here call them "crash bars," but probably not too many think of them as something that would really protect the rider in an accident.

Royal Enfield USA sells them as "engine guards" on its Nfield Gear site. They "protect your engine from damage in the event of a fall over..."

For motorcycles that are too heavy to pick up once they go all the way down, anything to prevent that probably makes sense. I vividly recall standing completely still astride my brother's big Kawasaki and feeling it gently but inexorably slipping sideways from my grip. Mercifully I was standing next to a large boulder that provided  a resting place part of the way down.

Engine guards make sense for motorcycles that must park on city streets, where the odds of being bumped over are substantial.

Still, for most motorcyclists, engine guards are probably just one more shiny thing they can put on the motorcycle. The bars may not add much practical value but they do offer this advantage: they give you a place to attach even more shiny things.

They're not for my Bullet, though. Yes, I've heard the warnings that in an actual crash they can bend, pinning the rider's leg to the motorcycle. I've never seen that happen, but it is not a happy thought.

Here is an experience I did have. Years ago I had a storage room on the back of the house. It fell into disarray and was so crowded I could no longer get in to find anything. Disgusted, I reached in, picked up the female end of a heavy duty extension cord, and began walking into the yard.

The extension cord unwound, roping a lawn chair, the arm of which caught a table, the edge of which collected a shovel, the blade of which pushed a whatnot into a whatchamacallit, the lip of which hooked a thingamajig that brought with it a shelf full of everything else.

I kept walking. By the time I reached the fence, the storage room was mostly empty. Its contents, wound in electrical cords, ropes and garden hose, were spread across the back yard, ready to be reorganized.

That's my fear: that the engine bars will snag a bumper in traffic or a towing ball in a parking lot, and down I will go.

If it could happen it would happen, and I would feel very silly.