Every year thousands of deadly motorcycle accident happened in different places all over the Philippines. Crashing is an unfortunate reality of the motorcycling experience and many companies right now are investing to developed a such kind of protective gear like helmets, armor and riding suits to protect riders.
Motorcyle Club Philippines shared this protective gears for riders. The airbag system technology from the two biggest names in high-end motorcycle racing gear - Dainese and Alpinestars.
Like most cutting-edge pieces of technology, these systems are immensely complex. That said, there are a handful of key elements that can be understood by pretty much anyone.
Airbag systems for motorcycles—and horseback riders—have existed in various forms for years. In the old days, airbag suits functioned and deployed via a tether cable anchored to the bike (or horse). Today’s airbag suits combine advanced software algorithms with various pieces of hardware to deliver a safety system that's incredibly precise and effective. Alpinestars and Dainese’s systems operate completely independently, can be used on any motorcycle without connecting anything to the bike, and deploy substantially faster than tethered airbag vests.
Both systems have been in development since the early-2000s and are currently used by riders in the highest levels of motorcycle racing. Because this was brand new technology, its development took years. If a part or piece of software was needed and didn’t exist it had to be made from scratch.
Though the D-Air and Tech-Air systems use different proprietary technologies, the two systems ultimately have quite a bit in common. Each system features an airbag vest that is worn under a jacket or suit that has been specially designed to accommodate the airbag systems. In the event of a crash, the system deploys in a fraction of the time it takes the human eye to blink - inflating around the rider’s collarbone, ribs, and torso.
The suits detect crashes prior to impact thanks to built-in accelerometers, and a trio of gyroscopes. Dainese's system also utilizes a GPS unit. These sensors constantly feed data to a main computer, communicating around 1,000 times per second. The use of multiple sensors works as a safeguard to prevent false deployments and to ensure deployments do occur when needed. If one accelerometer senses a crash and the others don’t, the system won’t deploy. Because this technology is so well refined, there are no recorded instances of either systems deploying falsely or failing to deploy when needed.
The GPS on the D-Air system is another important element as it allows the ECU to know how fast the bike is moving and whether or not to deploy based on speed. So, for example, if you drop your suit on the ground, it will know that it isn’t moving quickly and won’t deploy. In fact it won't deploy under 25-30 mph. The Tech-Air system uses an advanced algorithm instead of a GPS unit. The advanced software has logged two decades of crashes and can determine when a wreck is traumatic enough to necessitate deployment of the airbag. The Tech-Air system also goes into a stand-by mode while off the bike, assuming the rider is out of harm's way.
They also inflate incredibly quickly thanks to some seriously advanced materials. For example the D-Air system utilizes microfilaments—one of 35 patents used in the Dainese airbag system—a series of millions of tiny filaments that connect to both sides of the interior of the airbags. These microfilaments allow for constant and even distribution upon rapid inflation, in the case of the D-Air system, something that takes on 45 milliseconds. As a point of reference, it takes about 300-400 milliseconds on average to blink.
Like the vast majority of top-of-the-line riding gear, the D and Tech-Air systems were initially developed and used in MotoGP before eventually being adapted for use on the street. For this reason, both Alpinestars and Dainese offer street and race airbag systems that differ from each other in numerous of ways. The Dainese system’s street variant offers greater protection to vital organs in the rider’s chest as these are areas that often suffer damage in accidents on the road, while the D-Air racing version focuses on protecting its wearer’s rib cage and collarbone.
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