Would you be interested in a Helite Airbag Vest specifically for EUC riders?.

[The Brahan Seer]

With EUC's now reaching higher and higher speeds I have had tentative discussions with Helite who manufacture Airbag vests and they have suggested the following solution for EUC riders:

'The simplest way is a motorcycle airbag triggered by a long lanyard attached to your monowheel. Though it will not cover all accidents, for example if you hit a car before falling and it will trigger if you have fall at slow speed ( cost of spare cartridge is 25 € ).

 The best protection would be a manually triggered airbag, the driver decides himself to trigger activating a small switch located in his hand. You could trigger before hitting cars, trucks or before being hit. Same for a fall, you can choose to activate the airbag if you feel unbalanced at high speed. 

We could also develop an electronic detection, no need for the rider to take the decision, but it will not detect in time impacts against cars if you do not fall before. Trigger can be disabled under a given speed to avoid inflations for falls at low speed. You won’t be covered if you ride slowly and a car hits you.'

The beauty of this company is you can reset the airbag yourself so you just need to replace the gas canisters (around $30).

I'm interested to know your thoughts and what you think is the best implementation. 

Personally I think an electronic solution would be the way to go but what are your thoughts?

At what speed should the airbag be disabled? if at all?

Also would you be interested in this product if it came to market?

Prices start from around  £350UKP/$600USD/550EU to over £850UKP/$800USD/850EU

https://en.helite.com

 

[Boris Lämpel]

I have a helite motorcycle airbag jacket, but don't use it for unicycling. I do not ride in traffic so falling alwys results in sliding. So I dress for sliding, not for a hard impact.

Being protected against instand impact, the activation of the airbag system is too slow, because You first have to stretch the activation strap. But that will only happen, if You already fly through the air (in the das of being hit by a car). It should be the same with electronic systems.

To be safe in traffic You would need self activation (with a high risk that You miss the right time) or distance sensors all around You. But than You could not split lanes and pass near obstacles.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Boris Lämpel

[Paul A]

Tether deployment might not be possible depending on crash, as evidenced by this video.

Artificial intelligence deployment seems to be better.

 

[The Brahan Seer]

@Boris Lämpel Yes this was my thoughts too. The lanyard would be too slow or not activate. Maybe the electronic solution would work if they can program it specifically for EUC type falls. I would hope the material used in the jackets would enable sliding too (the textile technology being so good these days). A manual pull cord could be useful but not for a cut out which is what we really need. 

[EUC Forest]

I have the e-Turtle Helite, I bought it for EUC riding when not offroad (rarely for now.) I think it would have helped in the crash I experienced (wheel cut off which sent me tumbling forward on the side, hitting shoulder, elbow, hip, ...) because it also inflates around your shoulders and chest, but of course there's no way I can tell it would have inflated before impact, probably not. Even just after impact might be good, protecting in the tumble (when you can hit whatever at high speed, not just the road).

[Tawpie]

I'm so padded up I look a bit like a marshmallow, so I'm sort of "already air bagged" anyway and wouldn't spend money on an airbag vest.

The fall detection system in the Apple watch works 'sometimes' for me when I'm riding (yes, I ride off-road and on snow, so I fall. Frequently). They track your arm and look for suddenly raising it followed by an impact. Obviously, that's far too late for an airbag and in my MTen overlean the watch didn't think I fell. I think you'd need to have several instrumentation points to trigger on a cutout (like for example, both feet left the pedals and then the body position is rapidly rotating from vertical to horizontal and the arms are swinging up and a mic has been hearing beeps).

The real danger I see is false positives... an unexpected airbag deployment is likely to cause a fall and besides being the exact wrong thing to happen, deploying before you fall might mess up the deployment timing so the bag isn't protective when you do hit the ground.

Now, a neck airbag is another story—going off the wheel backwards with a heavy helmet tends to whiplash my head into the ground. I've no clue how that could be safely activated either and if it happened very often I'd wear a neck brace. But so far, I've only whacked the back of my helmet twice... and not very hard.

[EUC Forest]

The Helite airbag inflates around your neck and holds your head in place. Also it has a Level 2 back protector with great coverage. And provides excellent hi-viz.

I thought it was already deactivated at slow speeds...need to RTFM apparently!

[conecones]

Seems like a great idea in theory, but might not be very practical in actual use. I can think of the following issues:

- Durability of material after use. How do you determine if product is safe to use again? What is the puncture resistance vs traditional hard plastic armor?
- Electronic system reliability after impacts/rough handling, rain, cold weather
- Deployment reliability in unforeseen circumstances. Manual deployment has obvious weakness of individual reaction time. Auto deployment means your life rests in the hands of people who wrote the algorithm. Similar to experienced skydivers, you should be packing your own parachute (i.e. not rely on another person for your safety.)
- Battery monitoring, just another thing to check before the ride.
- Compatibility with additional armor. I see there are vest and jacket options. The vest seems good for warmer weather but has no shoulder or arm protection and it could have issues being worn with traditional armor. Part of what makes EUC fun is the versatility, you could be doing high speed runs on the open roads to start, then hit the off-road trails, then go into the city for some food. Traditional armor can be customized and removed/added as needed easily without much concern for compatibility.

While the cartridges are cheap, the cost of one jacket can buy you a LOT of traditional safety gear. Unfortunately no amount of money can buy common sense, and I know there are many who would disagree, but I think if you are pushing the top speeds of the modern EUC's (to the point where traditional hard armor might not be enough), safety isn't exactly top of mind and so gear like this has no real market other than the occasional guy who just want to wear it because its cool (I'm recalling seeing some photo of a rider decked out in brand new racing leather jumpsuit (in red of course) while riding an S18 )

[Skeptikos]

4 hours ago, Tawpie said:

The real danger I see is false positives... an unexpected airbag deployment is likely to cause a fall and besides being the exact wrong thing to happen, deploying before you fall might mess up the deployment timing so the bag isn't protective when you do hit the ground.

Once it's inflated you're protected, so there's no such thing as "mess up the deployment timing".

It also doesn't seem likely to cause a fall, at least not more than, say, a random gust of wind. None of the riders who have tried airbags have mentioned them causing a fall, or even falsely inflating at all for that matter.

I think the biggest limitation is the financial one-- you don't want to be using expensive airbag deployments when you expect to fall a lot. (So, not the best solution for Chooch or Mike Leahy.) And then the second issue is that it's programmed for motorcycle crashes, so we don't know how well it will detect EUC crashes. But early reports sound promising. I think it's pretty reasonable to have one for faster street riding, given what we've seen so far. As long as it inflates in a crash, it provides much greater protection than motorcycle pads, especially around the shoulder area that's hard to protect.

[Skeptikos]

11 minutes ago, conecones said:

While the cartridges are cheap, the cost of one jacket can buy you a LOT of traditional safety gear. Unfortunately no amount of money can buy common sense, and I know there are many who would disagree, but I think if you are pushing the top speeds of the modern EUC's (to the point where traditional hard armor might not be enough), safety isn't exactly top of mind and so gear like this has no real market other than the occasional guy who just want to wear it because its cool (I'm recalling seeing some photo of a rider decked out in brand new racing leather jumpsuit (in red of course) while riding an S18 )

The idea that hard armor completely protects you is way off base. It's fairly minimal stuff that's meant to protect you from something like a 1-meter drop, and doesn't even always work for that. The amount of impact protection from a vest is massively greater, which can definitely come in handy. An obvious example would be a crash with a car. But the greater protection is useful even when you're only hitting the ground-- imagine the different outcome if ThaBlackCobra had been wearing one.

[Tawpie]

1 hour ago, Skeptikos said:

Once it's inflated you're protected, so there's no such thing as "mess up the deployment timing".

Ah. I see. I'm thinking of car airbags that inflate but don't hold their inflation so you don't bounce off... they want to collapse when you smack into them to slow you down gently, so they're intended to start to lose air immediately. The timing is pretty precise. These must be different.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Tawpie

[Paul A]

Crashed at 70MPH Without Injury: Airbag Vest Review

101,070 views

May 2, 2020

 

 

 

[Unventor]

21 hours ago, Tawpie said:

I'm sort of "already air bagged"

Somehow this just cought my eye and I thought, you are looking at me when talking . 

But unfortunately my airbag is always deployed on the front... And it is an old design so no spare part available. My prototype stayed at 1st edition. 

 

[EUC Forest]

23 hours ago, EUC Forest said:

The Helite airbag inflates around your neck and holds your head in place. Also it has a Level 2 back protector with great coverage. And provides excellent hi-viz.

I thought it was already deactivated at slow speeds...need to RTFM apparently!

From the manual:

Autonomous version (without SDU fork sensor), the system only detects accidents
from a speed above 20 km/h. Here are the possible detection cases:
- Motorcycle striking or being struck by a significant obstacle (vehicle, wall, post, etc.)
from the front, side or rear.
- Slides and falls (high side, low side).
The detection system of the autonomous version uses the GPS signal to optimize the
triggering situations. If the system does not detect or badly detects the GPS signal we
cannot guarantee the triggering of the airbag.

[Skeptikos]

On 2/12/2022 at 9:13 AM, The Brahan Seer said:

With EUC's now reaching higher and higher speeds I have had tentative discussions with Helite who manufacture Airbag vests and they have suggested the following solution for EUC riders:

'The simplest way is a motorcycle airbag triggered by a long lanyard attached to your monowheel. Though it will not cover all accidents, for example if you hit a car before falling and it will trigger if you have fall at slow speed ( cost of spare cartridge is 25 € ).

 The best protection would be a manually triggered airbag, the driver decides himself to trigger activating a small switch located in his hand. You could trigger before hitting cars, trucks or before being hit. Same for a fall, you can choose to activate the airbag if you feel unbalanced at high speed. 

We could also develop an electronic detection, no need for the rider to take the decision, but it will not detect in time impacts against cars if you do not fall before. Trigger can be disabled under a given speed to avoid inflations for falls at low speed. You won’t be covered if you ride slowly and a car hits you.'

The beauty of this company is you can reset the airbag yourself so you just need to replace the gas canisters (around $30).

I'm interested to know your thoughts and what you think is the best implementation. 

Personally I think an electronic solution would be the way to go but what are your thoughts?

At what speed should the airbag be disabled? if at all?

Also would you be interested in this product if it came to market?

Prices start from around  £350UKP/$600USD/550EU to over £850UKP/$800USD/850EU

https://en.helite.com

Anyway, to answer your question, yes I'd be interested. Though I don't think the Helite representative gave the best advice.

I agree with you that the electronic version makes the most sense. It seems like the only reliable way to detect EUC falls, which are often too fast to hit a manual trigger. The fact that it wouldn't be able to inflate before you ram a car is a problem I don't have an answer to. But the faceplant without a car scenario is a lot more common, and I'm more worried about that. Maybe the best solution would be an electronic version that also includes a manual trigger.

If Helite sold the electronic version in the US I'd be looking closely at it-- motorcycle or bicycle version, either one. But I might go with the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5 regardless, because it has much greater shoulder coverage and that's the main part I'm worried about. Not sure. (Note: Apparently I can buy it from FC-Moto? Hmm...)

I've been thinking about getting an airbag for a while, and I put it off with the excuse that I'm a lightweight so if I slam into my shoulder I have a decent chance of coming out OK. But now that I have an EX.N I'm thinking about it again. I'm pretty torn-- I'm built like Chooch, and the people I've seen with bad shoulder injuries are heavier than me, so it's hard to justify spending $700 when there's a chance that I'm light enough to be well-protected by good motorcycle pads.

The Helite's cheap canister replacement makes way more sense than the expensive Alpinestars system, given that EUC riders crash semi-regularly. That's a really big point in its favor. If I could verify that I can get the replacement canisters in the US, I think I'd prefer the Helite vest.

 

PS: The fact that they offer a bicycle version (and another company offers a skiing version) shows that this really isn't meant to be exclusively racing gear. It's impact protection, and non-racing crashes can still involve bad impacts.

[SuperHawk]

I have a Helite vest I've used for years motorcycling, with one deployment when I went down on ice a few years ago. 

My first EUC (V12 HT) is on the way and once I get the hang of it I am planning to use the vest if possible. The biggest issue I see is I haven't been able to identify any solid attachment points for the tether. I'm concerned the plastic shell won't be strong enough and just get damaged/torn off if I attach to that. 

[The Brahan Seer]

On 9/24/2022 at 6:45 PM, SuperHawk said:

The biggest issue I see is I haven't been able to identify any solid attachment points for the tether

Yes the engineer from Helite suggests..The best protection would be a manually triggered airbag, the driver decides himself to trigger activating a small switch located in his hand. You could trigger before hitting cars, trucks or before being hit. Same for a fall, you can choose to activate the airbag if you feel unbalanced at high speed. 

 

Something along the lines of a toggle on your jacket you could use. I did send them links to crashes for them to see the types associated with EUC's but never heard back from them.

[EUC Forest]

I'd say automatic is still safer (and without tether), what about a cut-off? Too sudden and shocking to react and you need all the protection you can get...even if it's a little "late", ie the vest could help you when you slam into something after sliding etc,...even if it's not fully blown up at "ground impact time".

[The Brahan Seer]

@EUC Forest I totally agree, its a shame I didn't hear back from them about an electronic solution but maybe the current one might work slightly. Another option is something like this although I don't know how much better it is to standard armour...

https://rxrprotect.com/en/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9bLH3uX08gIVTdTtCh1LPAszEAAYASAAEgLwrvD_BwE

[SuperHawk]

I received my V12 HT today and successfuly rode it while next to a fence. Once I reach competence it looks like the handle might be a suitable mounting point for the tether. If it's strong enough to hold the whole EUC hopefully it'll be strong enough for the airbag activation. I would probably go for one of the electronic ones if I didn't already have this from motorcycling, but I think this will help in some if not all crash situations. 

[The Brahan Seer]

@SuperHawk If you have time it would be great to hear how you get on with it. I really like the way the vest wraps around the shoulder area so hope it works well for you.

Safe rides.

[HELITE Airbag Technology]

Hey Folks,

 

My name is Mike and I am a representative for HELITE Airbag Technology. I just wanted to chime in on this thread to see if I can help answer any questions you may have regarding our technology, and how we can offer this technology to the EUC community. The owner of our company rides an InMotion V11 and that is what brought me here to this forum. He is passionate about this community and wants to see how we may be able to bring this technology to market for the EUC riders out there.

We are open to hearing your thoughts, and I am happy to answer your questions. I look forward to interacting with you all and becoming a member of your forum and community. 

[Tawpie]

Welcome! If you could do me a favor, spend a bit of time reading—watching the (many) crash videos on YT, getting familiar with why we crash and how we crash—and with the debate over how much and what kind of gear is appropriate.

I'm personally eager for a gear manufacturer to offer specialized protective equipment for EUC riders—we make do with motorcycle and mountain bike, skier and skater gear, but putting aside interactions with motor vehicles and objects anchored to the planet surface, it's probably not as effective and wearable as it could be. Plus, quite honestly, we look scary and dangerous and dorky. I call my vibe "retired yellow power ranger". Others think: "circus bear, the tutu must be at the cleaners".

As to an airbag vest, I might be interested but cost is a factor and that's making the assumption that it'll actually activate in the correct situation! I think I'd want it for a high speed cutout, and I'd really want it to actually prevent my elbows from locking and transferring the landing to my shoulder... then it needs to cushion the blow to my chest. But it can't go off when I nerf a root on a trail and tumble to the ground. I almost think I want it to have a speed based arming system (your patent should be pending). The other thing I'd want it to be certain to do is to NOT raise my torso so high off the ground that my head whiplashes into the pavement.

Anyway, I have a lot of thoughts on gear and that comes from favoring off-road where if I'm not falling down, I'm not having enough fun. I am glad you're here though, you should learn to ride. It's fabulous.

Edited March 2 by Tawpie

[Paul A]

Helite might not be appropriate for EUCs....it uses a tether for deployment.

Rider needs to separate from anchor point by sufficient distance for activation/inflation.

Anchor to what on an EUC?

Tether is cumbersome ..... may deploy inappropriately.....may not deploy when required.

 

A cutout throwing a rider face forward into the ground, will not activate inflation.

 

Why buy a Helite when there exists better quality options available.

Alpinestars, Dainese, Klim, utilize artificial intelligence.  

They are effective, reliable, race proven.

 

This racer does not use a tether system.

The airbag deploys completely before rider has even separated.

 

 

Edited March 2 by Paul A

[The Brahan Seer]

20 hours ago, HELITE Airbag Technology said:

HELITE Airbag Technology

I'm wondering if the design of a vest could incorporate more chest/ abdominal coverage whilst still providing the immobilisation of the neck/torso like a traditional one. 

Common injuries seem to be shoulder, clavicle from impact traveling up the arm. If a vest could be deployed that absorbs the frontal fall to some extent before the arms engage the ground would be great. I appreciate that this would need testing incase it results in undesirable outcomes.

Another common injury due to lack of coverage by traditional safety gear is around the waist like the front and sides of the hip.

I certainly think for high speed (>50Kph) a vest would be a great addition.

But as stated here before best to look at the various accidents especially now we are hitting 90Kph+ 

Thank you for approaching the forum and I look forward to seeing what options you think are best.