Italian motorcycle safety equipment manufacturer Dainese finally announced the development of road-ready airbag system. The company have been working on this for a long time, the racing system is ready for market launching and now it’s the road system turn. Marco Simoncelli, Michi Ranseder and Jorge Lorenzo helped the italians testing the product, which accelerated product development.
Dainese D-Air road-ready airbag system
The first working prototype without cables or connections to the motorcycle was devised in 2000 with the help of Israeli partners; the idea was good, but weights and costs were deemed too high. Plus, there was no way it could inflate while sliding over the ground. The second phase in the development of D-Air availed of qualified partners at the highest level that included the University of Padova, preside of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and one of the world’s leading experts on two-wheeled vehicle dynamics, and the German 2D Company specialized in data collection/processing and development software. The Fiat Safety Center put Dainese in contact with the most evolved companies involved in air-bags for automobiles.
The racing version is already used in the MotoGP
Together with Guy Martin, Dainese has been conducting tests on the Mountain Course since 2007. The first two years were dedicated to collecting the data required for the development of the racing version with the airbag system built into Martin’s suit. This way, information could be acquired on a very different terrain than those on Moto GP circuits. This year instead, Guy Martin will be equipped with a different data acquisition system specifically studied for the collection of information necessary for the road version. It seems the system is working fine, namely Martin crashed on the Isle of man TT heavily and the D-Air could be partially responsible for him surviving that crash with only minor injuries.
Guy Martin suffered only minor injuries after this crash
It’s possible that there could be two levels of protection being brought to market to suit price points and customer preference. Dainese didn’t published the time of the introduction of the D-Air.
