*** COMMENT *** But what will it protect you from? If the pictures are to be believed, the latest version of airbag clothing will protect you from a collision with a car. But once again, theres no evidence about precisely WHAT the jacket will do - just vague claims that it will protect the wearers vital organs by covering the back, kidney areas, chest and the shoulders. Technologically, its impressive - the sensors detected the crash in 59 milliseconds and the airbag itself had a deployment time of 25 milliseconds, meaning that the airbag worn by the test dummy was fully inflated before impact with the car. However, how useful is that? Before the usual bunch of replies come in about how brilliantly they work when MotoGP riders fall off wearing airbag-equipped leathers, you dont generally collide with anything solid at a race track. What about the riders forward motion if they do hit something solid like a car? Well, now the problem is that our external skeleton stops moving fairly suddenly. Now, that would break bones and maybe an airbag would help prevent fractures, but broken bones and even a punctured lung is rarely fatal. The bigger problems is that the squidgy bits inside our rib cage keep moving. Internal injuries often rupture the major arteries connecting the heart and lungs with other bits of the body, and thats often fatal. Without any measurement of just how the airbag reduces the G forces operating on the body, its impossible to say just how much use it will be in a collision at any speed. Take a look at the linked photo below and see what other parts of the dummy suffer impact. Youll note that the overhead pic appears to show the riders head hitting the edge of the roof of the car - theres a distinct dent forming. If you receive fatal head injuries from that impact, theres not much point in having an airbag jacket! Other common injuries resulting from this type of collision include a fractured pelvis resulting from the legs being forced apart by the tank. You can see this happening in the overhead shot and this is another potentially fatal injury if a femoral artery is severed by the broken bones. Broken thighs can result from hitting the handlebars. The machine chosen for the crash test is a BMW twin - take a look at the dummys shins and see what theyve just hit. Thats why standing up and jumping just before impact is a good idea. So its possible that the dummy might somersault over the car, which could well happen if the rider hit the bonnet of the car rather than the door. In this case, just like a racer whos highsided, the main impact from that kind of crash test is going to be with the ground on the far side of the vehicle, which means that the energy that has to be absorbed is basically that generated by the fall from a couple of metres up. But the injuries that result from those kinds of impacts are nearly always survivable So heres an interesting question. Do any racers at the TT or the NW200 wear airbag race suits, where there is a high risk of collision with walls, trees and telegraph poles? We dont know that they do, but if there was a demonstrable benefit, wed bet that most would have adopted the technology. coolhunting/tech/alpinestars-tech-air-street-system
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 12:04:35 +0000
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