As I walked the North American International Auto Show floor, one little booth shuffled away in the back of the show caught my attention. Autoliv, a major supplier of automotive safety equipment, has hauled out concepts for how it wants to save more lives. It wants to do so with airbags for motorcyclists, airbags for Bird scooter riders, and an airbag to wrap around your grandma.
Autoliv is a major supplier of car safety items, yet its presence in Detroit was more like that of a university or startup company. In fact, before I put the airbags and the Autoliv name together, I thought that this was a startup.
But it’s far from that. Autoliv opened in 1953 by Lennart Lindblad. Back then, it was called Lindblads Autoservice AB. And right from the start the company was about making safety equipment. In 1956, Lindblads made its first seatbelt.
In 1975, the now renamed Autoliv got acquired by a company that made a seatbelt retractor. Skipping forward, in 1989, Volvo introduced the company’s seatbelt pretensioners in its cars. Autoliv’s history goes on from there and includes notable developments like a knee airbag in 1995, side curtain airbags in 1998, in 2005, a hood that pops up during pedestrian collisions, active seatbelts in 2006, and even a hood airbag for pedestrians in 2012.
Today, the company claims a huge 43 percent market share with its safety products in cars all over the world. Autoliv says that its products saved close to 35,000 lives in 2021 and prevented more than 300,000 serious injuries. And of course, it wants to save even more.
The new product that first caught my interest is Autoliv’s motorcycle airbag.
Last year, Autoliv teamed up with Piaggio Group. The two believe that motorcyclist deaths and injuries from crashes with cars can be reduced if the motorcycle can deploy an airbag like in a car. Their idea to achieve that is to limit at least some of a motorcyclist’s momentum during a frontal crash.
The concept of a motorcycle airbag isn’t new. Honda invented a motorcycle airbag back in 2006 and offers it on the Gold Wing. Progress has been slow since then and 16 years later, the Gold Wing is still the only production bike with an airbag. Patent filings show that Honda is still committed to expanding the concept, but Piaggio and Autoliv want even more motorcycle airbags out there.
Autoliv’s system works like Honda’s where a sensor detects a frontal crash, a computer determines whether to deploy the bag, a pyrotechnic inflator fires off, and the bag inflates. There’s a video of it being crash-tested, which can be viewed here.
The company is still testing its system, but expects to put them on the road soon. Unfortunately, its reps tell me not to expect them in America anytime soon. Autoliv is targeting the massive motorcycle market of Asia first. It believes that launching in Asia first is important since so many riders out there are riding not for fun like Americans, but out of necessity. And, as we’ve all seen in videos, riding out there can be chaotic.
But Autoliv didn’t just come to the show with motorcycle airbags, it also brought a motorcycle airbag jacket, a delivery robot airbag, and airbags for riders of Bird and similar city scooters.
As you could probably guess, the people riding those little scooters zipping around major cities can get pretty banged up in a crash. In the UK, there were 1,280 collisions involving eScooters in 2021. The statistics here in America don’t look any better. Between 2017 and 2020, there were more than 190,000 emergency room visits resulting from crashes with those little scoots, and these injuries often lead to head injuries.
For that, Autoliv has developed an airbag that covers the top of the torso, neck, and some of the head during an incident on an eScooter.
Autoliv’s idea here is that you won’t bang up your noggin if your head never hits the ground in the first place. Like the motorcycle airbag, Autoliv does not have a timeline on the rollout on this creation. How the rollout would work is also unclear. So many of these scooter riders don’t wear helmets, so would they don an airbag?
Finally, the last airbag that caught my attention is one for your grandma and grandpa. Hip fractures are a serious concern for the elderly. Some 76,000 hip fractures happen every year in the UK, and many senior citizens die within the year of their hip fracture. More never fully recover. Once again, things are worse in the USA, where some 300,000 senior citizens are hospitalized for hip fractures.
To help reduce these numbers, Autoliv has developed a belt that an elderly person can wear that will inflate if they fall.
Autoliv’s rep told me that like the motorcycle bag, it inflates using pyrotechnics. While some wearable airbag solutions may use tiny CO2 cartridges, the company believes that pyrotechnics are the best way to inflate an airbag the quickest.
Amazingly, Autoliv is not the first to make an airbag for hips. There are all kinds of startups out there with different kinds of garments designed to reduce or eliminate injuries from falls. Some of these are belts, vests, or even entire hoodies. A Virginia Tech study found that an airbag can reduce impact forces by about 85 percent, which is below the threshold for hip fractures. Sadly, Autoliv didn’t give me a timeline for this product, either, but it sounds like a good idea.
Autoliv impressed me with its display, and made me laugh just a little at the thought of putting an airbag on everything. It’s neat to see the company branching out from automotive-related products and into motorcycles, pedestrians and healthcare. Hopefully, we’ll get to see these things for real one day.
There is a French company CX Air Dynamics which makes airbag jeans for bikers. You got it, the inventor had a leg mangled when he was pootling along and someone coming out the driveway knocked him off, and his leg landed between the kerb and the bike. Doctors had a whale of a time, 13 fractures.
First one works like G trousers, fighter pilots have, using compressed air and a leash — he was working on Mark 2 using accelerometers like in a car, with bluebooth connections, but the first ones are shifting so fast that it has gone on the back burner.
Airbag jackets have been a thing in France for 5 years or so, and also the spine boards like the racers use.
I read a similar article quite a while back. My 1st question was, are they gonna strap my ass to that sled so the airbag can pretend to work?
“Aw, go put an airbag on your grandma” sounds like an insult from a Frank Capra movie.
Around here in Copenhagen DK, neck worn airbags are very common for people, who thinks their hairdo will be ruined by wearing a normal bicycle helmet.
It’s expensive and complicated, and it’s always fun to see one accidentally go off, but it’s quite a succes: https://hovding.com/
As a reasonably alert motorcycle rider, who wears protective gear to suit the conditions, I vote nope.
Sounds like a way to diversify and make money for an airbag company selling an idea to people that don’t actually ride.
I assume they would become component suppliers to manufacturers of riding gear or medical devices (for something like the hip thing). I would think you’d see medical applications first since those pockets are deeper, and the potential for savings is huge. I assume someone subject to hip fracture could fire off a couple of these airbags per year and still save money over a hip replacement and even a brief hospitalization.
As a long time EMT/Paramedic, I’ve been on more calls than I care to remember for falls with subsequent hip pain/injury. The hip airbag idea is intriguing, but flawed. As the person falls, if the pelvis hits first, that’s fine, but the shoulder then head are next. The belt would need to be worn with the funky looking jacket next to it in order to make a big difference.
Yeah, and I’ve got a grandmother who falls several times a year, and refuses to wear her medical alert pendant or carry a cell phone, I can foresee the argument over wearing an airbag jacket indoors in Florida with the air conditioning turned off because she doesn’t think it’s hot
In another time of my life i mixed pyro, I would rather had a C02 Helite Vest. Mercedes can we get a review on those type of Gear for Motorcycles
Plot twist: we discover Autoliv is a wholly owned subsidiary of Takata, and they want us to strap the equivalent of claymores around our necks! /s
Still, I think I’ll pass.
How about an air bag for clueless pedestrians walking around staring at their iPhone? Now that would be a huge market.
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Screens are overwhelming and they look tacky, tasteless and cheap. Buttons are a much better way of conveying quality.
This looks like the next evolution of the air bag jacket. Not opposed to the concept.
Mercedes just wanted to say thank you for coming here! Excellent piece again! I’m only bike-curious, but I found this very interesting. Keep being awesome please.
Should make a pelvic airbag based on that crash test video. Crotch on the tank first hit
I dunno.Do we really want bikers reproducing? XD
Saw a personal airbag system advertised at a horse show the other day. They said it was the same system they sold for motorcyclists, and it certainly made sense. Good price too, well under $1000.
I guess a big airbag in front of the rider would help when colliding with a wall or a truck, but for American riders I wish there was something for being rear-ended at stoplights. I hope automatic braking systems help with that.
Bah, I was WAY off. It was the Hit-Air system and it was going for €4000. Still cheaper than medical care + lost wages for a bad getoff.
Why wouldn’t you just get something like a Helite Turtle 2? They are like ~$650, rechargeable, and use a tether to trigger which means you could hook them up to a horse (saddle). I guess it doesn’t mesh with the cowboy or equestrian look though.
There are several companies making and marketing inflatable vests for equestrian sports. CO2 cartridge inflation, with a pull cord attached to the saddle. Slim and tapered enough to fit under a show coat for the disciplines that mandate such (hunters and dressage), though many showjumpers also wear them externally over their riding shirts. Imagine eventually they’ll be mandated like hard-hats, even as conservative as horse people are. 15 yrs ago it was common to see ball caps in the schooling rings, but that’s outlawed at sanctioned shows.
Dang, that’s hella cheap. And yeah, the horsey people could use that too.
Great ideas, but I’m not a motorcyclist, so my opinion doesn’t count. The majority of the cyclists in my state won’t even wear a helmet, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they consider the US market for these to be too small to bother with.
This looks like great technology, but is there any indication it’ll be subscription-based?
Rather the opposite – Autoliv is one of the names in ODM/OEM safety technology and has been for many years. Unlike the Co2-based ones (especially the scummy ones that haven’t undergone real testing,) they have no interest in and do not sell any products direct to consumers.
Not a single one. You, Joe Public, cannot buy things from Autoliv. You have to buy them from other companies that buy them from Autoliv.
And it’s rather hard to charge a subscription for a single-use item. I’m sure BMW or Tesla or Audi will find some way to. But Autoliv exclusively uses pyrotechnic systems. Once those airbags deploy, they’re done.
Though for the jacket ones, I could see someone offering a sort of replacement subscription service – pay X dollars per year, and if the airbag deploys, they cover replacement.
If scooter riders won’t wear helmets I don’t see them wearing an airbag.
I couldn’t imagine riding one of those in / through / around traffic without a helmet. A bordering state does not require helmets for motorcycles and it still freaks me out seeing helmet-less riders.