That's the eye-opener for most people, and probably the main benefit of videos/conversations like this. Yes, any armour will help reduce the energy transmitted to your body, but the whole kinetic energy "velocity squared" thing means that road-going speeds routinely and vastly exceed any armour or helmet's ability to prevent injury if you hit an immovable object like a curb or pole.
Falling from about 1 meter means you're hitting the ground (vertically, independent of your horizontal speed) at about 16km/hr. That's the kind of ballpark impact speed that armour and helmets are effective at preventing injury. There are lots of variables, of course, like if the object isn't actually immovable, or if you can cushion your fall with some other flexible part of your body first.
Using made up numbers for a moment: if the energy required to break a certain bone is 250 units, which can be reached by hitting something immovable at 16km/hr, and some piece of armour is capable of reducing that energy to 125 units. Good stuff, no fracture. Double that speed to 32km/hr and we're now talking about 1000 units, which has completely blown past the ability of the armour to do much for you. 64km/hr and we're now dealing with 4000 energy units. Remember, the armour only reduces the energy by 125 units.
Even so, the takeaway for me isn't that armour is useless, it's that I need to do everything in my power to avoid collisions with immovable objects.
