Racer Magazine has a picture of the (what I think is) a Dianese air bag that was used in testing, shaped like a horsecollar around the riders helmet that will deploy from the leathers during an accident. It must deploy rapidly, as you can tell this guy just hit the tarmac and its already engulfing the area between the shoulders and the helmet bilaterally. I agree that this, like the HANS device, will greatly assist in neck/spinal injuries, but what if the rider has an easy off and can pick up the bike and start racing again?? I would think that a fully inflated airbag would greatly hamper head movements and therefore his/her vision and if it does gradually deflate, the rider will have this flapping bag around the neck for the duration of the event. Thoughts? Doc
I think its a good idea. I actually did a senior engineering thesis on this about 4 years ago in college. They way we built our design was to have a small computer determine specifics about the speed, angle, position of the rider opposed to the bike, etc to determine if it was a serious crash. If a serious crash situation was detected it fired.
Right, I knew this was discussed prior as far as its existance, my question was what happens after its deployed? Is the riders race over? Can they still ride post?
The airbag is attached to the outside of the leathers, in the form of an air hump. After the bag is deployed, the hump/bag can be very quickly removed by pulling a chord that seperates the bag. Go to http://www.dainese.com/eng/d-air.asp and watch the test video. It would take a couple of extra seconds to seperate the stuff if you lowsided and were able to keep the clutch in, before you could get back on the track. I don't think many of us need to worry about that though!
i think their device was more around the bike. the dainese unit is for the leather suit to protect someone in a racing situation. I could be terribly wrong but vague memory tells me that.
