Daineses D-Air Street

DAINESES D-AIR STREET

Dainese’s revolutionary system could seriously save your bacon

WHAT IT IS, IS AN INFLATABLE VEST inside a jacket that’s triggered when a system of bike-mounted sensors detect an impact or slide based on some heavy-duty mathematics Dainese has been working on for over a decade. In conjunction with a back protector and chest protector, the D-Air Street system is designed to protect the rib cage, vital organs and spinal column, and to limit the kind of extreme neck movements that cause paralysis or worse.

Deployment of the airbag, which happens in a very rapid 45 milliseconds, is activated by accelerometers on the fork and on the rear of the bike that must be installed by a licensed dealer. The sensors plug into an ECU/information display panel that’s mounted in the cockpit of the bike (normally on the handlebar), and the ECU communicates wirelessly to trigger the airbag in the event of an impact or fall.

Dainese says this level of complexity is necessary to ensure the bag deploys in time; if the airbag wasn’t triggered until the rider felt the impact, there could be too much delay for the bag to do any good. The main claim to fame is simply this: Dainese says it reduces the force of frontal impacts compared to just a level 2 back protector— all thanks to the D-Air’s 12 high-pressure gas bags which inflate to 12 liters of nice, cushy air pillow instantaneously. So far, Dainese says the jackets have logged more than 90,000 test miles, and will have undergone more than 800 tests to gain very strict German TUV certification.

Our U.S. Dainese sources have no pricing information, mainly because there are no plans to import D-Air Street for now— but a little Euro web scrounging uncovered jackets ranging in price from about $1000 to $2000, with the sensor kit selling for around $600 in the U.K. We’re also told Dainese won’t sell you a D-Air Race Suit to wear in the U.S. either, a year after its introduction. Liability? What a shame.

—John Burns