Best Protective Gear for Electric Skateboarding (in 2023)

Although electric skateboarding is super fun and an exciting activity, it carries a severe risk for injuries. We can get seriously injured by falls on the hard tarmac. The best thing to avoid injuries and damages to our bodies is to wear proper protective and safety gear! If you really are aware of the risks, the second you buy your first electric board, you’ll buy the protective gear, as well. Please don’t leave your local store or the online shop without a helmet, knee pads, elbow pads, and gloves. For riding safely we should wear protective and safety gear! I did a lot of research and will present in this article the most reputable and reliable protective gear for e-skating.

We definitely need a helmet when riding on electric skateboards. Knee and elbow pads are also a good thing to have. And gloves can be very practical and pain saving too. I would never recommend protective gear which has not proven to be safe. And although safety is by far the most essential factor for choosing your protective gear I only picked safety gear that doesn’t make us look like a dork!

Best Electric Skateboard Protective Gear

Why do we need protective gear when riding on an electric skateboard?

Accidents

Electric skateboard accidents happen all the time. I flew several times off my board and had serious bruises and abrasions. The reason that electric skateboarding is so dangerous is we ride these boards with high speeds on the hard tarmac. If we take falls our body will likely get injured.

But when do crashes actually occur? How can we avoid these in the first place? The most common accidents happen when electric longboarders and skateboarders:

• Ride beyond their skill level (Lose control and fall)
• Skate on improper or irregular surfaces (rails, curbstone, cracks in pavement)
• Ride in rainy conditions (wet and slippery surface)
• Going too fast (downhill or too much throttle)
• Run into cars, bikes, pedestrians, skaters or another e-boarders
• The remote control disconnects
• Regenerative braking stops working on some boards if the battery is fully charged

Study to read more about this topic (https://www.hindawi.com/journals/emi/2014/924381/)

Most common injuries

Because electric skateboarding is very new to the mainstream public we haven’t collected enough data to surely say which are the most common injuries. But we have 3 types of sports who are very related to electric skateboarding and these are: longboarding, skateboarding, and inline skating.

The most common injuries among inline skaters, skateboarders, longboarders, and e-skateboarders are:

• Abrasions and bruises. (Falling with speed on hard pavement lead to grazes and contusions)
• Hand, wrist, or shoulder injuries (may occur when skateboarders lose their balance and fall on an outstretched arm)
• Head injuries, including concussions, (these are the greatest danger to skateboarders) These can involve time in a hospital, permanent impairment, and — in extreme cases — even death.
• Ankle and knee injuries are also quite common. They occur when borders have not warmed up their body enough and avoided falls by jumping down from the board.

If you want to learn more about the dangers of electric skateboarding, check out my article.

Best Helmet for Electric Skateboarding

The helmet is the most crucial part of our electric skateboard safety gear. We shouldn’t go e-boarding without a helmet.

The brain is our most important organ. Got abrasions and bruises? – It hurts for sure but after a couple of days, you won´t bother.  Broke your hand? – It’s a pain in the ass to only have one hand available for weeks, but after some time you probably will be fine again.

Got a concussion or skull fracture? – You could get mentally disabled or even die. Prepare to spend a long time in the hospital. You get lucky if your mental state stays the same.

I can´t say this enough times: Please, please, please wear a helmet! It can literally save your life!

What to look for when choosing a helmet for electric skateboarding

• Safety standards (protection certifications)
• Field of view
• Weight
• Cooling and air vents
• Sweat liners
• Look and Design
• Price

Beware, not all helmets are equally safe. There are a ton of helmets and helmet types -skate, bike, motorcycle, longboard – out on the market. Surprisingly, during my research, I found that many of these helmets are not officially certified! On the one hand, companies may do this to save money as getting certifications can be expensive. On the other hand, making a proper protective helmet to pass the tests may require manufacturing techniques and can be pricey as well. That means that the majority of helmets on the market don’t offer legit protection!

While there are a ton of helmet options available on the market, I have narrowed it down to a few manageable trustworthy choices. I researched a lot and wrote a comprehensive guide on electric skateboard helmets and which one to buy. You get to my article here.
I think all of these hit the sweet spot between style and comfort.

Safest half lid helmet:

Triple 8 Dual Certified

The Triple 8 Dual Complies with U.S. CPSC Safety Standard for Bicycle Helmets for Persons Age 5 and Older and ASTM F-1492-08 Safety Standards for skateboarding. They put everything they know into updating the shape and look, without sacrificing the safety. Dual certified means that it’s good for skating and biking and there is also the patented MIPS Technology low-friction layer to reduce rotational forces caused by angled impacts. The company worked closely with longboarding, BMX, commuting, and derby to refine the helmet to combine great shape, fit, and function.

Complies with CE EN 1078 – Helmets for pedal cyclists, skateboarders, & roller skaters and with AS/NZS 2063 – Bicycle Helmets

Lumos Matrix

The popular Lumos helmet has now an upgraded model. The Matrix has a bigger LED Panel at the back of the helmet with which you even can “program” your backlighting modes. With handlebar-mounted wireless turn indicators and 10-hour battery life, the Lumos Matrix weighs a mere 580g! That’s extremely light when you take into consideration the amount of tech and safety features included. The helmets can also connect to the Lumos App, and share data with Apple Health/Google Fit. Check it out on their website.

As if all this cool tech isn’t enough, Lumos helmets also carry a host of Safety Certifications; four in all – CPSC/F1492/EN1078/AS2063! Ride easy, your cranium is guaranteed cool looks and VIP security.

Price: $270 – $290
Check it out here on Amazon.

Safest full face helmet:

TSG Pass

The TSG Pass is one of the most popular full face helmets on the market today. It is dual certified and it has shown to be very protective. as well as being certified by the International Downhill Federation as the best Longboard Downhill helmet available. Despite its full-face design, it has a large field of view and moreover, it just looks badass.

Properly fitting helmets should meet these criteria:

• Is worn flat on your head and Sits low on your forehead
• Has side straps that form a “V” shape around each ear
• Has a buckle that fastens tightly (there should be room to put only two fingers between the strap and your chin)
• Has pads inside that you install or remove so the helmet fits snuggly
• Does not move in any direction when you shake your head

If you want to know more about other helmets for e-boarding and how to choose the right one, check out my article.

We need to make it a habit to wear a helmet when riding our electric skateboard. It will become second nature to wear a helmet just like it is to buckle up our seat belts when we get in the car.

Best Gloves and Wrist Guards for electric skateboarding

If we fall off our electric skateboards one of the first things we do is to stretch out our arms and hands to curb the impact and to protect our noggin. Hence, our hands, wrists, and forearms will likely be hurt. But hurting and cutting our hands is really annoying! We need our hands in every day, using our phones, doing the dishes, or another hands-work is not a lot of fun with injured palms. Hence we should guard our hands and wrists when going out for a ride. The best way to protect our hands is with gloves or wrist guards.

Using gloves in e-skating is controversial. Because on the one hand (see what I did here) we sure want to protect our hands and wrists other the other hand our fingers need to hold the remote control to control the electric skateboard. The remote control is very sensitive to control. We need to make precise movements on the remote control, therefore, our fingers have to be sensitive as well. But that’s the Dilemma our fingers need to be sensitive and at the same time, we want them protected. So we need gloves which are offering protection and allow our hands to be flexible and practice fine motor skills and maneuvres.

How to choose electric skateboard gloves

• Level of protection
• Comfort
• Sizing and fit
• Material
• Look
• Price

The most important feature of gloves and wrist guards is that they can slide on the tarmac if you take a fall. This will convert most of the impact energy into a controlled slide. Hence your hands and wrists are well protected and will not get hurt easily. So look out for plastic caps and parts on the glove or wrist guard which can slide.

Best gloves:

Flatland3D Pro E-Skate Gloves

These gloves are specially designed for e-skating. In my opinion, the Pro E-skate gloves form flatland and Knox offer great protection and at the same time, your hands will still be sensible enough for your remote control. Flatland is a company that is committed to electric skateboarding accessories. Knox has a pretty long history of producing protective motorcycle and bicycle gloves. Now they have teamed up and designed a glove, especially for e-skateboarders. These gloves have the special Knox patented Scaphoid (wrist bone which brakes most of the time)  Protection System (SPS) built in to protect your hand and wrist by adding two sliders to the palm of the glove. Additionally, the company has built-in a new one-directional flexible wrist plate. It is flexible in the forward direction for comfort, but rigid in the other direction to prevent hyperextension. This wrist guard is designed to not interfere with holding your remote control easily. But if it does you can remove it! Hence these gloves offer similar protection like wrist guards but still let you hold the remote control comfortably in your hands.
The Fingerless Pro E-skate gloves have free fingertips and are designed for riders who want to feel the remote control in their hands. And, they have a terry cloth thumb panel to wipe your helmet visor! You can get them on flatland3d’s website.

Original E-Skate Gloves from flatland3d and Knox

Original skate gloves have free fingertips and are designed for riders who want to feel the remote control in their hands. Like the Pro E-Skate gloves, they have the SPS built-in, hold a special terry cloth thumb panel to use as a wipe for your helmet visor.

Best armored hoodie for riding an electric skateboard

How can you deny a cool looking 100% Dupont Kevlar hoodie that allows you to have range of motion, 5 padded areas with a low design profile, partitions to add Level CE1 pads for your back, elbows, and shoulders if you want, waterproof packets, zippers for airflow and the best protection for keeping your torso free of cuts, scratches, and bruises? The Lazyrolling hoodie is it. It comes in black and grey and looks like just a nice hoodie. Not the badass protection that it is.

Use the discount code “E-SKATEBOARDER” to get $20 off.

If you want to know more about the Hoodie, check out our Lazyrolling Armored Hoodie Review here.

Best knee and elbow pads for electric skateboarding

Let’s think about taking a fall. You will probably fall onto your hands and after that land on your knees. So proper knee protection can save us a lot of pain. Furthermore, we often roll out a fall, hence elbow protection is a good idea as well. I have owned a few knee pads and can say the bigger the better. But while we want good protection the pads should not get too bulky so riding gets impossible. I did research regarding the best knee and elbow pads on the market (you can get to my full article here) and will present to you the best ones.

What to look for when choosing knee and elbow pads

• Softshell or hardshell
• Sizing and fit
• Comfort
• Quality – brand reputation
• Cooling and sweat liners
• Look and Design
• Price

The most essential point when deciding on knee and elbow pads for electric skateboarding is their level of protection and their slide ability. If we fly off our boards we want to slide and not to get stuck on the tarmac. If we slide out a fall the impact energy will be distributed and the fall is overall much less harmful to our body. So make sure to take knee and elbow pads with big and durable plastic caps.

187 Killer Knee Pads Pro

The company, “187 Killer Pads” has been producing pads for professional skaters for the past decade. Started by a long-time skater in a family-owned shop, 187 Killer Pads has since become a reputable choice of skaters – and eboarders – worldwide.

187 Killer Pads Pro Elbow Pads

These pads were designed to offer the highest level of elbow protection. The pads surround the elbow offering cushioning while still providing maximum comfort. The pads have extremely thick padding, which proves useful against impact protection and gives you maximum range of motion to pump your fist in the air after that sick move, bro.

Additional protective gear for electric skateboards

Head and taillights

If you want to ride your electric skateboard in the dark also, lights are very useful and actually a must. Your rides will be a lot safer if you put lights on your board or on yourself.The best head and taillights for electric skateboarding are “Shred lights SL-200”. They are very bright, easy to install and remove, have a long battery life, are water-resistant, shock and vibration proof and are available for a fair price. You can check them out at Shredlight’s Website.

LED Vest

Another very useful safety gear item is a reflective and LED vest. The big advantage is that cars and other traffic members can see you from almost any angle during nighttime. Reflective and LED vests are actually made for runners or cyclers but in my opinion, these are perfect for us electric skateboarders! Eboards have a pretty big vertical visual area. Lights on our boards can help us to see the street but Vest helps us to be seen! They offer 360 degrees of visibility using multi-color optic LED lights. Some of them can even change the color and have the ability to flash as well.

They normally run on 3 AAA batteries and lasts up to 40 hours. In addition, reflective materials and detailing adds more visibility to this vest. The vest is weather and sweat proof. It’s minimal design can be worn over t-shirts or heavier clothing. I researched the most popular and reputable vests. You can check out my top pick here on Amazon.

Lumos helmet

The Lumos helmet has white LEDs on the front side and red LEDs on the backside. It will probably increase the safety of your rides considerably. The helmet has built-in that can detect acceleration and braking. If the accelerometer detects breaking the red backlight on your helmet will glow brighter. You can even indicate your turns with blinking arrows (that will point in the right direction) on the helmet. It has a ton of positive reviews. Customers seem to love this helmet. You can check it out here on Amazon. Check out our Review on the Lumos Helmet here.

Padded Shorts

With padded shorts, you can enjoy skating at fullest without worrying about rear, hip and thigh injury. If you are planning to try out new tricks or push the throttle to the limit then padded short are probably a good idea.

The Triple 8 Bumsaver are crafted with soft and breathable mesh fabric, this short is highly flexible and comfortable. This makes sure they don’t restrict you from moving in any way you want to. The material is also breathable so you can sweat through them with no issue. Speaking of sweat, you can also remove the pads for easy washing. This is a major key as the pads are gonna get stinky after a lot of sessions.

For greater protection, the shock absorbing EVA foam is used throughout the hip and tailbone areas.

LED Armband

Moreover, there is another very useful option to increase your vertical visibility. Attach LED armbands or leg bands to your body to improve your visibility. They are available in many colours and sizes and are affordable. This is a helpful gear for cyclists and runners as well. The armband that people like the most on Amazon is this one.

Best electric skateboard shoes

Shoes are also important for electric skateboard safety. We recommend wearing shoes that have slip-resistant sole and have a closed-toe and protective design. Additionally essential is that the sole of the shoe should be flat. Furthermore, the style of your shoes is inherent. You should buy shoes that you like! Trendy, comfy, shoes will boost your confidence and optimize your performance on board. The brand is not very important. But brands in skateboard and longboard industry which proofed to have quality shoes are: Vans, Converse, DC, Adidas, Nike, Etnies, Globe

Flip-flops and crocs are not recommended – whatever you use, you need to be confident of being able to safely run off the board in an emergency.

What to look for when buying shoes for electric skateboarding

• Flat, slip-resistant sole
• Protective and closed-toe design
• Should be comfortable
• Good looking

How to get eskaters to wear protective gear when riding Electric Skateboards

We need to make it a habit to wear a helmet when riding our electric skateboard.

It frustrates me seeing kids riding their bikes, scooters, and skateboard with their helmet tucked under their arm. And I have to admit I have forgotten to wear my helmet and pads a few times as well. Sometimes I even question if I really need a helmet or other protective gear. But if I see people fall or take a fall myself I am instantly reminded that wearing protective gear can be soooo essential. I noticed that I never question wearing a helmet when it comes to skiing or snowboarding which got me wondering. I would never go skiing or snowboarding without all my gear: skis or snowboard, boots, pants, jacket, gloves, goggles, and helmet.

We wear our helmet when skiing and snowboarding because the helmet is something that was ingrained into our heads as part of ski and snowboard gear (besides the warmth that it provides) for years.

We have to embed the same mentality to ourselves. We should wear our protective gear from the beginning. There is so such thing as eskating without a helmet. But the companies, Youtbers, blogs on the internet should collaborate too! No more product videos with riders without helmets. No more reviews on eboards without wearing protective gear! No Casey Neistat riding through NYC without a helmet!

If we can implant this mindset in ourselves and our kids when it comes to the electric skateboards it will become second nature to wear a helmet just like it is to buckle up our seat belts when we get in the car.

Best Electric Skateboards

Check out our articles on the Best Electric Skateboards in each category :

Final thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed reading this article. If you have any questions comment below. I am eager to constantly improve the quality of this blog so feel free to give me feedback!

Now it’s your turn!

Which safety gear do you like most, and why? Let me know in the comments section below!