Observations on the recent Transport for New South Wales Airbag Tests

Transport for NSW has crash-tested seven motorcycle airbag vests. The chest results are encouraging, but the neck protection four of the vests advertise was never assessed, and the neck data the testers recorded hasn’t been published.

I’ve been wearing airbag vests since 2009, using the Japanese Hit-Air brand exclusively. Mine are tethered vests that use a lanyard under tension to trigger inflation, and are fitted with the optional rigid chest protector. I wear them over my jackets (both textiles and leathers), with a Dainese back protector underneath. I credit my continuing ability to walk to a Dainese protector that I believe prevented significant spinal injury in a rather unpleasant snowboarding crash many years ago.

I consider full-face helmets and back protectors to be essential items, along with CE-rated clothing. Airbag vests get my vote for the added impact protection and cervical hyperextension protection. The data on the effectiveness is evolving, as this NSW study demonstrates. I went through it to see what it provides and what it misses.

In the study’s crash test, a Honda CB125F carrying a rider dummy was driven at 48 km/h into the side of a stationary SUV. At 96 milliseconds the dummy’s face struck the upper window and roof edge, which the report calls the most significant impact of the event [1]. The neck loads from that impact were recorded and haven’t been published [1].

The report, released in September 2026, tested seven airbag vests sold in Australia [1]. In frontal impacts the best vest cut the calculated risk of serious chest injury from 85% to 9%, and all four vests in the crash test detected the crash [1]. The report also recommends that an independent program such as MotoCAP assess airbag vests for consumers [1], and I agree.

Alpinestars says the Tech-Air Off-Road’s airbag inflates around the neck [2]. In&Motion, which makes the airbag in the Klim Ai-1, lists the neck among the areas its system protects [3]. Helite lists the cervical spine for the Turtle 2 [4], and Hit-Air lists the neck for the MLV [5]. The Tech-Air 5, Tech-Air 7x and Dainese Smart Air make no such claim [6][7][8].

A face-first strike on a roof edge would be expected to force the head backward, which is the loading a neck collar is meant to limit. Two of the four vests in the crash test, the Tech-Air Off-Road and the Ai-1, have one [1][2][3]. The testers recorded neck forces and moments on the dummy but left them out of the report because they weren’t a primary outcome of interest [1].

Alpinestars states that the Tech-Air Off-Road is incompatible with all neck braces [2]. A rider who buys it gives up a brace and relies on a collar that, as far as I can find, no published test has measured. The same is true of the neck section on my own Hit-Air vests. A finite-element study found that neck braces can in some cases increase the risk of neck injury [9], and a simulation of three brace designs found that rigid and semi-rigid braces moved injuries from the upper to the middle cervical spine [10]. Researchers in Spain have already tested cervical airbags for cyclists on a Hybrid III dummy and measured how far they reduce neck hyperextension [11].

Of the four crash-tested vests, only the Klim Ai-1 was fully inflated before the head struck: on the report’s own figures it reached full inflation at about 87 ms, nine milliseconds before the head strike [1].

The Helite Turtle 2 is triggered mechanically, and its lanyard pulled free at 105 ms, once the dummy had moved far enough forward to stretch it, so inflation hadn’t begun when the head hit the roof edge at 96 ms [1]. The testers never measured the Turtle 2’s inflation; they borrowed the 50 ms recorded for Helite’s electronic e-Turtle 2 and put full inflation at 155 ms, after the chest hit the window at 136 ms [1]. Helite quotes 100 ms for the Turtle 2 [4], though it doesn’t say whether that covers inflation alone. Tethered vests, mine included, share that dependence on the rider moving far enough to pull the lanyard.

The report credits the Tech-Air Off-Road’s first place in the frontal tests to a passive chest protector mounted outside the airbag [1]. Hit-Air sells the MLV as compatible with optional armor [5], yet the report doesn’t say whether the MLV was tested with the optional chest protector, the configuration I ride in, or how its lanyard was pulled in the laboratory. Its 142 ms inflation time, the slowest of the seven, may reflect that pull as much as the vest’s design [1].

The laboratory impacts were made about one second after the airbags fired, on bags that had fully settled, with a flat plate 152 mm across [1], conditions that favor an airbag. Finite-element work by Cherta-Ballester and colleagues found that an airbag’s benefit grows with the contact area of the object struck [12], and researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and Université Gustave Eiffel have proposed a rigid cylinder of 5 to 10 cm radius as a more realistic test [13]. Only the chest was struck, at a single point [1], so the back, spine, hip and neck coverage that several makers advertise went untested [2][4][5][7].

Nothing in the report suggests any impact was repeated, so it seems to me that the spread of frontal results, from a 1% increase in chest compression to a 27% reduction, can’t be separated from ordinary test-to-test variation [1]. The headline reduction of up to 76% is a fall of 76 percentage points, from 85% to 9%, for one vest in one frontal test. In the side impacts the best result was a fall from 33% to 27% [1].

In a comparable motorcycle-into-car test, a purpose-built motorcycle dummy’s head hit the roof rail while the heads of three cadavers passed over it; the researchers traced the difference to how the fuel tank held the pelvis [14]. TfNSW used a modified Hybrid III, and its head hit the roof edge [1]. If the head strike is partly an artifact of the dummy, the timings used to judge whether each vest inflated in time are affected too.

The European standard for motorcycle airbags, EN 1621-4, tests at 50 J, which the Munich and Gustave Eiffel researchers consider well below real crash energies [13]. Its revision, which went to public enquiry in August 2025, still covers only mechanically activated vests [15], while six of the seven vests TfNSW tested in the laboratory rely on electronic crash detection [1]. A French study cited in the report found no significant reduction in fatality risk among airbag wearers [1], and the European PIONEERS project assumed a benefit only for trunk injuries at rider impact speeds below 30 km/h [16].

Publishing the neck data already recorded requires no new testing. After that, I’d want to see the MLV tested with and without its chest protector, collar airbags tested for harm as well as benefit, impacts timed during inflation with the airbag pressure measured, narrower impactors, repeated runs, crash detection tested across several kinds of crash, and a motorcycle-specific dummy [17] alongside riders of more than one size [18]. Université Gustave Eiffel and In&Motion are already studying how airbag vests perform in real crashes in France [19], and an Australian or American equivalent is needed.

If we’re going to encourage riders to buy airbag vests, shouldn’t we at least be testing them thoroughly, and in the configurations that offer the most comprehensive protection? One of the most striking findings for me, and which also clearly warrants further research, is the inflation timing for the tethered vests. Those stats alone have got me thinking about which of the newer products might offer more sophisticated protection for my own riding. It seems that the technology is evolving alongside the testing protocols; I’d like to see a neck-brace compatible vest – Alpinestars seems best placed to create one – and an integrated hydration option for outer vests like the Hit-Air and Helite.

Ride safe.

Tim

Featured image: crash test setup, Transport for NSW, Motorcycle rider airbag vest testing (2026). Reproduced for non-commercial use with acknowledgement, as the report permits.

References

1. Transport for NSW. Motorcycle rider airbag vest testing. September 2026.
2. Alpinestars. Tech-Air Off-Road System.
3. In&Motion. Several products, one technology.
4. Helite. Turtle 2 airbag vest.
5. Hit-Air. MLV airbag vest.
6. Alpinestars. Tech-Air 5 System.
7. Alpinestars. Tech-Air 7X System.
8. Dainese. Smart Air motorcycle airbag vest.
9. Khosroshahi, S. F., Ghajari, M., and Galvanetto, U. Assessment of the protective performance of neck braces for motorcycle riders: a finite-element study. 2018.
10. Investigation of motorcyclist safety systems contributions to prevent cervical spine injuries using HUMOS model. Transport Research International Documentation.
11. The effectiveness of cervical airbags in the control of head and neck kinematics. Universidad Pontificia Comillas, 2023.
12. Cherta-Ballester, O., et al. Investigating the effects of inflating a wearable airbag under a motorcycle jacket. IRCOBI Conference, Stockholm, 2024.
13. Aranda-Marco, R., et al. Improvement of the frontal thorax airbag test procedure for assessing the protection of motorcyclists in a more realistic impact scenario. IFZ, 2022.
14. Carroll, J., and Bolte, J. IV. The powered two-wheeler crash test dummy behaviour compared with PMHS reference responses in one full-scale motorcycle-to-car collision. IRCOBI Conference, Stockholm, 2024.
15. CEN/TC 162. prEN 1621-4, Motorcyclists’ inflatable protectors. Draft standard, 2025.
16. Serre, T., et al. Airbag jackets for motorcyclists: evaluation of safety and economic benefits. IRCOBI Conference, Stockholm, 2024.
17. Carroll, J., Been, B., and Burleigh, M. A novel powered two-wheeler rider dummy: specifications and initial testing. 27th ESV Conference, 2023.
18. SAFER / Chalmers. Equal safety for the whole population of powered two-wheeler riders. Research project, 2025-2027.
19. Université Gustave Eiffel and In&Motion. EDAIR study information notice. 2023.