Airbags for motorcyclists?

You already know that the 2006/7 Honda Goldwing offers a factory-installed airbag that protects the rider from crashing through the fairing and imparing their intercoms, CD players, navigation systems, airconditioning, hairdos etc.

Today, I read about Hit-Air today, whose chief dreamer Kenji Takeuchi makes the fairly famous air bag equipped riding jackets. Want a testimonial? de Azevedo, who stood eighth (I think, definitely top ten) at the 2006 Dakar wore a custom made Hit-Air jacket this year. The jacket looks fairly normal, but has an inbuilt airbag, which inflates in about half a second when the rider and the bike separate (a two ended cord pulls out a key in the inflation system when this happens). Which means extreme caution when you hop off the motorcycle to fill gas or buy a cigarette.

You already know that Dainese makes the D-Air, which claims a 30 millisecond inflation time, which means you go from 'oh shit' to upset blowfish in a flash. The D-Air now has CE certification, so that means someone tested it (and not like that chap on Guinness Book of Records who taps everything with a pencil and says, 'A-OK,' either) and it works. The D-Air is activated by a wireless sensor, so you're not likely to autoinflate when you hit the air curtain at the corner store.

So is that our future? Leather clad rebels who're just waiting to puff up like a blowfish? Motorcycle tips and tech sites will have tips about how to bounce out of the way of traffic when you fall, or how to land on your feet after the first bounce... At the very least, this sort of thing will be fun to write, eh?