As milder weather approaches, we’re going to see more motorcyclists out on the roads.
It can be a lot of fun, but motorcycles just don’t have many of the same safety advantages as cars and trucks.
So a company in Sweden is taking one of those safety features and adding them to a rider’s outfit: introducing airbag pants!
The company is called Mo’Bike, and for $499, you can order the pair of jeans they’ve developed containing a replaceable carbon dioxide cartridge.
The jeans are connected to the body of the bike with a kind of tether.
If that system senses that the rider is falling, the CO2 cartridge and, therefore, the pants will inflate, just like a car’s airbag does during a crash.
And it happens so fast that the pants are fully inflated before the rider would hit the ground.
Now these pants on their own are not going to protect every rider from danger.
The airbag pants don’t protect the whole body, so you’d still do well to put on a helmet and a thick jacket, maybe some gloves.
And no pants are going to save a motorcyclist from reckless riding, or, say, a distracted driver who doesn’t watch out for bikes.
But it’s a step toward making riding less dangerous – and a pretty stylist step at that.
March is National Peanut Month, so here’s a reminder that there is a NUTmobile that drives around the country doing events on behalf of nut producer Planters.
It’s 26 feet long, shaped like a peanut shell, and they hire college grads for one year terms to drive around as peanut ambassadors.
Wearing top hats or monocles is optional.
Swedish company unveils world’s first airbag jeans for motorcyclists (Interesting Engineering)
The Nutty History of the NUTmobile (Planters)