It would be strange if you heard one piece of your garments can protect your body versus the injury from a motorcycle crash. Airbags for cars are placed on the steering wheel and dashboard to prevent head severe collisions with hard objects so they can increase the chance of saving a passenger/driver’s life. For the same reason, such airbags should be very valuable for motorcyclists who are not even surrounded by anything like the iron body of the car.
If you think helmets are enough, they only protect the head, but what about other parts of the body, especially the legs? In addition, bikes don’t have bodies that airbags can be placed in them like a car. So, we have to look more detailed at the rider and his clothes. For example, we can put airbags in clothes So that they are inflated by the stimulation to protect the rider from a severe impact with the ground. Yes, it is an interesting invention that clothes provide safety for motorcyclists.
There are special jackets that with their special sensors can detect when they need to inflate, so as soon as the motorcyclists fall off the bike, they inflate and prevent the rider from hitting the ground by creating a cushioned surface. But these jackets do not protect legs while they are the first part of the body that impact much more than the other parts when a rider falls off. In addition, the weight of the motorcycle puts more pressure on them.
Recently, airbag jeans have been innovated that are able to prevent injury to the rider’s legs. But they’re only now being developed by a company called Airbag Inside Sweden AB who creates reinforced safety clothing for riders under the MO’CYCLE brand.
Motorcycle Airbag
There’ no timeline on when the airbag jeans will be ready for the public, but the company has developed a functional prototype that uses air bladders hidden beneath a pair of riding pants. When they’re empty, the bladders are barely noticeable and presumably don’t hinder a rider’s movements, but in an accident, they’ll inflate in a fraction of a second while the pants break away to make room for their rapid expansion. The prototype is currently manually triggered using a tether, but Airbag Inside Sweden AB has been consulting with researchers from Uppsala University in Uppsala, Sweden, to eventually incorporate onboard sensors giving the pants their own smarts to know when they need to inflate.
It would be a great pleasure to combine fashion design with science and technology to save human lives. An aspect that is considered in the design of airbag jeans that makes you able to wear any type and design of pants which you like.
