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Old 04-28-2009, 02:02 PM   #11 (permalink)
beatr911
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I was just thinking of this myself last night. This could evolve into an opportunity for seatbelts, side impact protection with airbags and possibly roll over protection.

Back in the '70s someone developed a seatbelt restraint system (I think a Volvo engineer) for motorcycles. It was ugly and cumbersome but functional in head-on impacts. Can't find a photo but I saw it on the net a while back. Especially then, few motorcycles had fairings, much less aerodynamic enclosures.

Also being "trapped" is not necessarily a bad thing in a crash. In the early days of racing into the 50's race cars didn't even have seat belts. Racers were told to duck down if they thought they were going to crash. Being "thrown clear" of the crash often resulted in additional broken (human) body parts as there was absolutely no human protection whatsoever from other vehicles, posts, curbs, rocks and tumbling and sliding on asphalt at speed. These days they are confined to very limited movement which really helps in a crash. We've come a long way with cars, but there is much left to do with motorcycle crash protection.

For safety, motorcycles need to be designed to at least modestly protect the rider in a variety of crash modes. An aerodynamic body could make at least a moderately functional system much more publicly accepable from a styling perspective.

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