An Air Bag for Motorcyclists?
Dec. 6 -- Think of a motorcyclist and you may think of a modern-day knight decked out in metal-studded black leather jacket, jeans, boots and dark glasses. What you probably don't think about is someone protected by an air bag.
Even the roughest Hell's Angels biker has a hard time escaping serious life-threatening injuries that typically result from high-speed traffic accidents. And for years, the motorcycle industry has been trying to ramp up better protective gear for bikers — including developing car-like air bags.
Honda, for example, tested a concept version of its Gold Wing touring cycle that had a built-in airbag to protect riders from head-on collisions. But the air bag couldn't protect riders from other types of road accidents such as slides caused by slick roads.
Rather than mount the air bag on the cycle, some have taken to developing systems that put the protection on the rider themselves. And the latest attempt comes from Dainese, a protective sports clothing maker in Vicenza, Italy.
The company's D-Air system seems like a simple concept: a vest that contains three "bladders" that inflate during a collision. But how the vest actually works is fairly complex.
Street Smarts
At the heart of the system is a tiny electronic computer called the STM (Sensing, Triggering, and Memory) that is mounted on the motorcycle and powered by a rechargeable battery.
The STM, developed by an Israeli technology firm called Merhav APP, contains sensors that monitor the bike's physical motion and a display that keeps the rider informed of what is happening and when to recharge the battery.
The STM also features a radio transmitter that wirelessly links the box to a receiver built-into the D-Air vest. The two electronic components are in constant communication, sharing data up to 3,000 times per second over a digitally-encoded frequency.
The sensors onboard the STM will watch for telltale signs — such as a sudden deceleration force of about ten times that of gravity — that precede a collision. Once the computer determines an impending accident, the STM blasts the data to receiver in the vest to start the inflation process.
