Every year, motorcyclists are involved in high speed accidents on highways or in sports. The risks of serious injury in these accidents are vastly higher than accidents involving regular automotive vehicles. In recent years, several companies have set out to design protective clothing for motorcyclists that are capable of deploying airbags upon crashing in order to lower the severity of the accidents and decrease the risk of death. The clothing is designed to safely deploy an airbag not, unlike a car, to cushion the impact of a motorcycle rider thrown from their vehicle. The airbags work by utilizing an accelerometer on their person that is linked to an integrated computer. When put under the conditions of a crash, the airbags preemptively deploy before they impact with anything.
While the airbags provide strong cushioning to help safely decelerate the rider, other methods exist to try to further protect riders. Many companies have been developing and improving back braces and hard armor since the 80s to attempt to protect the spine and neck of motor cyclists. These protective items are tried and true and have been in use for quite some time already, but advancements in material sciences have kept them pushing forward. That being said, the protection provided by the new airbag approach is showing signs of potentially outclassing the older hard-armor methods.
In terms of my semester spanning project, this advancement is valuable at both the conceptual stage and strategy phase. Knowing that the ideas I have worked on already have real world counterparts in development validates a certain level of proof-of-concept that Im on the right track for my project. It helps with the feasibility aspect I considered early on as well. In addition, knowing what others are developing allows me to prioritize the strengths and weaknesses of already existing models to set up improvement structures on the items and help strategize what further parts I can accomplish.
At first glance, the airbag suits allow me to identify what is possible at this moment. It also gives me a good area to stay clear of to help create a unique item for the market without diving too deep into another teams project. The challenges that those teams face, including the materials and physical limitations of the system help me get a better grasp on what I can expect as I further develop more. Having given a decent amount of time studying their work I understand a bit more of the extraneous items involved in working on my idea, such as sensors through the suit itself and onboard computing capabilities. The primary item that hinges on being able to implement these solutions into my work is just how effective including similar technologies into the helmet and near the neck could improve the chances of riders
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