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[jotjotde]

Hello Folks!

This is about riding an electric bike with an airbag vest to be worn underneath or overneath your normal clothing.
There are several makes and models available, I would like to inquire if any one of you uses such a garment, which model and why you chose it.

Background:
I made the (maybe) mistake to purchase a Dainese Smart Jacket and discovered while reading the manual, that the garment is (besides movement faster than 10 km/h measured by GPS) activated by vibrations - obviously those coming from an ICE.
Perusing the Dainese website I found this info quite hidden in the FAQ section. If that would have been communicated in the main product section, I most probably would have refrained from buying.
Inquiring directly at Dainese and phoning the Dainese shop nearest to me, they confirmed that on an standing electric bike the garment becomes inactive a few seconds after your velocity is below 10 km/h, i.e. in case of a car hitting you from behind whiile you wait at a red traffic light (happened to me two weeks ago, luckily with very low velocity) you will NOT be protected.

Looking at the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 garment as an alternative, I understand it does not come with GPS but has in total six sensors detecting sudden accelerations, therefore this system is independent from the type of motorcycle. On the other hand, Alpinestars expressly warns that the airbag could deploy in non-crash situations when the sensors are triggered, maybe by dismounting the bike too hastily, slippling while walking or maybe by your dumbass friends giving you a good shove for whatever reasons...

So I wonder whether to return the Dainese vest and getting an Alpinestars instead.
Thanks for sharing you insights!

Jürgen

[karlh]

Jürgen

I wear the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5.  I bought it because it has both Street and Race modes, and I do an occasional track day.  I also like the fact that it is not subscription-based like some other vests.

[jotjotde]

Hi Karl,

Switching from street to racetrack modus is for sure one of the most significant differences between the Dainese SJ and the Alpinestars TA5. The SJ is purely for street riding.
On the other hand, AS specifies in the owner's manual for the TA5 that an impact with minimum 25 km/h is 'necessary' to deploy the system. My understanding is that the SJ has a higher sensibility.
But then, the TA5 is including a permanent back protector, so at least spine protection is always there to an extend, which is not the case with the SJ.

Then there's Gimoto, another Italian maker of protective clothing, offering airbag vests which appear to target more the race-oriented riders, as the system can be re-armed more easily after deployment. Disadvantage is that the electronics for the airbag is in a hump, so the over-garment vest can only be worn over a jacket/suit without a hump. For the inner-garment vest the electronics should be built in the hump of the jacket/suit which is not always feasible. Plus for electronic deployment another electronic device has to be installed in the bike's tail, which was not an attractive solution for me.

I agree that the available suscription-based airbag systems are not attractive.

[Fred]

I'm not against subscription services in principle - but for a safety system? No.

[Starpower]

I used a Hit-Air MLV at all times - street, track, electric or ICE. I don't mind or notice the tether at all and there is virtually no chance of a false deployment. There is the potential of a low side where you stay with the bike and it will not deploy. This is a very rare situation.

[jotjotde]

Starpower - Thanks for pointing that manufacturer out. TBH the Hit-Air Airbag Vest was not on my radar.
Being able to re-arm it easily by yourself after deployment is surely a plus e.g. for serious racers.

Personally I like to be independent from a cable, but that's a personal choice.

[Starpower]

Rearming myself was a big reason for going this way. Check out the costs of factory arming!! In addition I wanted a vest that can go over anything I wear - leathers, aerostich, various jackets etc. Very versatile.

[hotsauce]

I picked up a Hit-Air MX8 jacket in May of 2021. I chose this over an electronic system mainly because:
1) price, although it's important to note that the price of this jacket looks like it's gone up by about $300!
2) simplicity. No subscriptions, no sending it away and paying another $100 to get the gas canister refilled
BUT
There are two significant differences between tethered airbags and electronic, and they both boil down to time.
First, inflation speed. From impact detection to full inflation is 30 milliseconds for the Dainese, while the Hit-Air takes 100 milliseconds to inflate after the tether is pulled.
Second is time between collision and initiation of inflation. With a tether, nothing is going to happen until you've travelled the distance of the tether without the motorcycle coming with you. If you go down in a slide, you and the bike go down together; the airbag won't do a darn thing until you separate from the motorcycle, which might not happen until you hit the ground. Since the electronic airbags monitor accelerometers etc., I imagine they would start deploying while you were going down. Similarly with a forward collision: you'll have travelled at least a foot before the airbag tether gets pulled, while I expect that an electronic jacket would figure things out sooner.

To illustrate what difference this can make: 60mph is 88 feet per second, so if at that speed you run into something like a car that has pulled in front of you, you'll have travelled 8.8 feet before the Hit-Air has fully deployed, but only 2.4 feet for the Dainese. If the distance from your seat to the car's windshield is 5-6 feet, only the Dainese jacket will fully protect you. And this calculation doesn't take into account how far you'll travel before the airbag tether gets pulled.

Mind you, airbags for street riding are new, and don't have a huge amount of market penetration. So we don't have any real-world data on how big a difference they make. Extrapolating from racetrack data is of limited use, because the most common types of fatal motorcycle accidents just don't happen on the controlled environment of a racetrack. If a racer takes a turn wide, they aren't going to slam into a tree or guardrail. If they go over their handlebars, it won't be into a wall or car. And no SUV ever turned left in front of someone on a racetrack. I mean, I still wear mine, but I don't blame anyone who decides that they're better served using almost $1000 for a better helmet and vehicle maintenance or what have you.

[Starpower]

when I bought my Hit-Air MLV several years ago it was advertised as 17 mS. I see now it published as 18 mS but some sites say 50. I sure don't think it is 100 tough. It takes about 300 to blink your eye.

[jotjotde]

when I bought my Hit-Air MLV several years ago it was advertised as 17 mS. I see now it published as 18 mS but some sites say 50. I sure don't think it is 100 tough. It takes about 300 to blink your eye.

Full activation should be in the range of 200-300 milliseconds, that is what you can read in several online publications.

I suspect these numbers also vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, because of the different impact force the airbag vest controller threshold is set.
Dainese says, the airbag is active at speeds larger than 10 km/h.
Alpinestars says, the necessary impact must have a force equivalent of being hit at 25 km/h (plus the impact has to come from a certain angle).

[hotsauce]

when I bought my Hit-Air MLV several years ago it was advertised as 17 mS. I see now it published as 18 mS but some sites say 50.

The only site I see quoting 18mS is misplacing a decimal point, which you can see by the fact that it also says ".18 seconds". But .18 seconds is 180 milliseconds, not 18. Revzilla quotes the Helite at .1 second, which is 100 milliseconds. In fact, according to this document on the hit-air website, it's even longer at .25 seconds (250 milliseconds)
http://www.hit-air.com/for_shop_support/web-data/MC-System_E2018.pdf
"S-SYSTEM deployment time: about 0.25 second"

But that document may be outdated; I'm still comfortable using the 100ms number. Still faster than an eye blink, but since traveling at 60mph means you go 88 feet every second, then during that .3 second eye blink you've travelled almost 30 feet. So "faster than you blink" just isn't that fast compared to vehicle speeds

[jotjotde]

Yesterday I had the opportunity to wear the Dainese Smart Jacket for a ride of approx. 6 hours incl. charge stops.

The jacket has a LED which shows you the status in which it is in, but worn underneath other clothes you obviously cannot see it. So they build a vibrator in.
When the jacket is active (ready for deployment) it buzzes longer once, when it switches to inactive it vibrates shortly several times.

I can report that off the bike the jacket activates sometimes e.g. if you move up and down while putting on your boots (Dainese recommends to switch the jacket off when you are not on the bike).
By deliberately jumping etc. or shaking the jacket I was not able to make it switch to active.

On the bike it quickly activates when you are moving. Under normal acceleration from a traffic light this takes only a second or so (velocity above 10 km/h).
When you have stopped, the jacket stays alert for about 20 seconds and then deactivates.

Before that tour I considered sending the Dainese jacket back and getting an Alpinestars, but I will not do that now. I think the Dainese is best for my purposes/riding style.

[jotjotde]

Addendum:

After having used the Dainese vest for some time now I can report that the controller somehow detects if you are in stop-and-go-traffic.
The vest stays active longer (30-40 sec) after coming to a standstill.

[Richard230]

This weekend one of the servers at Alice's restaurant told me about a fellow who rode up on a BMW R1100GS the previous day and he and his bike fell over as he tried to get off on the sloped pavement in front of the restaurant. He must have been wearing one of those airbags that has a tether to the bike as when he fell off, his airbag deployed making him look like the Michelin Man. After they helped him pick up his bike, everyone got a good laugh out of that airbag inflation.

[flynnstig82r]

I have an older Misano D-Air jacket that doesn't have the vibration detection feature and I was hit from behind at a stop. The time it took to accelerate to 6 MPH after being struck was so short that the jacket was fully inflated before any part of my body could hit any hard object. It may have prevented serious injuries, and now I will never ride without an airbag. I plan to move up to a newer model (probably the Smart Jacket LS or Sport) due only to the weight and bulk of the Misano.