Improving Airbag Technology
My colleague Brandon Jackson has been our go-to guy lately for airbag gear. He recently passed along some info from Helite. The company will have some fancy new technology available to its customers for 2020. Helite will be adding electronic airbag technology to the GP Air Vest and the Turtle 2 Vest.
This will be a new system offered alongside the mechanically triggered airbag system. The electronically triggered system will be comprised of two different sensors. These sensors will detect the situation the rider is in and then deploy the airbag system when needed.
The first sensor is for impacts and is installed on the motorcycle. It can cause the airbag to deploy even when the rider is at a standstill. The second is a motion sensor that can detect if a rider goes down or if there’s an accident while moving. These two sensors together should help make sure that the vest deploys at the right time.
The vest is reusable. All you need to do is replace the CO2 cartridge and it’s ready for another use. However, you should make sure it has not been damaged in any way when it was deployed. At this time, Helite doesn’t have pricing information for these vests. I’ll be reaching out to the company to see if there’s more information that we can share.
Update: After reaching out to Helite, it has come to my attention that the company will also put out a Helite airbag backpack. The estimated date for Turtle 2 and GP Air is the spring of 2020. The backpack will come out in the summer 2020. I’ve added an image of the backpack to the gallery below.
if it works it will be a good thing to have on the bike.thailand has a high rate of deaths and accidents and this would help
Any update to this? With the Klim Ai-1 the bar is raised
Not that we’re aware of Kevin.
I’ve almost got the Klim airbag vest in my hands to review too!
The downside to it is the fact you need to pay for a monthly subscription or tack on another $350 to buy the actual computer that does all the monitoring. Other than that it’s looking really good!
The other airbag that is impressing me is the Alpinestars Tech Air 5 system. It’s much improved over the old Tech Air. https://www.alpinestars.com/tech-air-5-airbag-system
It appears Helite has two electronic airbags: the E-Turtle (just launched) and an airbag that looks like a backpack. What news about the latter?
One other consideration is the cost to re-arm the airbag. For Dainese, it’s about $250 USD to repack and get their airbag back on the road. The problem is once it’s deployed, the airbag can no longer protect you if you still need to ride the remaining way to your destination.
I’ve been watching the helite airbags and it looks like you can pop in another cartridge after it deploys/deflates in the field so that you can continue on with your journey.
The Klim can also be serviced right in the field, but looks like the cartridges are quite expensive.
Just a few more things to consider…