This Backpack Turns Into an Airbag for Your Head

Over the years we’ve seen numerous contraptions designed to assist shield cyclists within the occasion of a crash, together with a neck collar that inflates across the head, and pants that blow up like a balloon. EVOC Sports’ new Commute Air Pro 18 seems to be a less complicated thought, hiding an emergency airbag inside a motion-sensing biking backpack.

The pack isn’t a alternative for a helmet—you’ll nonetheless wish to use fundamental widespread sense and do every part you possibly can to guard your head whenever you’re out driving and sharing the highway with vehicles and vehicles. But it guarantees to offer extra safety for different physique components which are simply injured when a bicycle owner takes a tumble, together with the shoulders, neck, chest, and collarbone.

The Commute Air Pro 18 seems to be and feels identical to a typical backpack when worn, however when the magnetic buckle on the chest strap is closed, movement sensors are activated that monitor the place and motion of the pack round 1,100 occasions each second. If sudden excessive motions are detected, indicating a crash or collision has occurred that was extreme sufficient for the rider to fall, an 18-liter airbag deploys from the highest of the pack, inflating in lower than 0.2 seconds and wrapping round their higher torso. EVOC Sports claims the airbag “reduces the impact forces and braking acceleration (HIC: head injury criterion) on the cyclist by up to 80%.” After the airbag has been deployed, and assuming it didn’t endure any injury, it may be repacked and its igniter cartridge could be changed, so fortunately the backpack and the security system are reusable.

The Commute Air Pro 18 is a practical backpack, too, with the compressed airbag taking on little or no house inside. It leaves room for a laptop computer which is accessible from the facet of the pack, varied pockets all through the inside for holding different electronics and knick-knacks organized, together with a smartphone and glasses, and an adjustable hip belt that ensures the backpack isn’t sliding round whilst you journey, in addition to taking a number of the weight of the pack off the wearer’s shoulders.

When out there within the spring of subsequent yr, nonetheless, the Commute Air Pro 18 gained’t come low cost. It might be priced at €900, which is a bit over $1,000. That’s in all probability dearer than the bikes many individuals truly commute to work on, however whereas it’s not low cost, you in all probability gained’t bemoan how a lot you spent on it the day it saves you from severe accidents in a motorbike crash.