[NEWS]
Innovation brings new road safety measures to market
A chest protection device that was developed following European research into improving ‘passive’ safety for road users is now available on the market.
The EU-funded project Aprosys aimed at finding different ways to wear the protectors, not only considering it as protective gear, but considering it as a part of a garment and aiming to improve the diffusion of this safety device among motorcyclists.
New motorcycle protection on the market
This chest and spine protector for motorcyclists arose from the project’s analysis of accidents and injuries. As the project coordinator, Margriet van Schijndel of TNO in the Netherlands explains, “the main injuries for motorcyclists are in the head, neck and chest. Well, the head is protected by motorcycle helmets but there was very little in the way of chest protection available.”
Aprosys carried out a series of simulation studies in order to understand how chest injuries occur – and then prototyped designs to find out the freedom of movement needed for protection to be wearable when riding a motorcycle. A second phase of prototyping then focused on materials and impact tests using a crash dummy. At the end of the project, Dainese took the proof of concept version forward into production and patented the design.
Aprosys
Aprosys, funded through the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme, was an initiative to find ways of improving ‘passive’ safety for road users. This means through measures such as airbags, seatbelts and helmets, which can avoid or reduce injury in case of accident, rather than ‘active’ measures which are designed to try to avoid accidents altogether.
The project, which ran from April 2004 to March 2009, produced many interesting results – one of which is already commercially available as the ‘Thorax Pro’ from the Italian company Dainese, one of the project partners.
Source: European Commission
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