The Dainese D-air Smart Jacket is actually not a jacket but a fully ventilated vest that can be worn underneath or even on top of any garment.
It is made in women’s sizes, too.
Cutaway shows the D-Air Smart Jacket on the inside.
The Smart Jacket is pretty much a vest.
It can also be worn under this jacket, one of several available from Dainese.
AlpineStars Tech-Air before and after deployment
More details of the Dainese D-Air Smart Jacket. The tops of the shoulders are less protected than with the AlpineStars Tech-Air system.
“If you’re interested, we could do a deployment on you …”
Sure, let’s do a deployment, an airbag deployment, but not in a car — instead, on my person, a sort of mini-Michelin Man scenario.
I was at Alpinestars headquarters, where they can do these things. The product we’d be using was an Alpinestars Tech-Air vest. It’s a garmet-like item that wraps around the tops of your shoulders, a little around your neck, then covers chest, back, ribs — all of your torso. It’s integrated with a large back protector and the whole assembly fits inside any of several compatible jackets. My jacket was an Alpinestars Tailwind. The whole thing was kind of heavy, but it fit me snugly. I rode many days wearing this and, once on the bike, you don’t notice the weight. Alpinestars says the vest and its inflators add only 2 1/2 pounds to the weight of your gear. That’s a worthwhile tradeoff. Plus, you can fit it into a large number of Alpinestars jackets, both for winter and summer riding. There is also a system made for track riding, which can be switched into a street jacket as you change locales.
How does it work? You plug it in when you’re home to charge it up before riding. When charged you get a flashing green light on the sleeve. There are three accelerometers and one gyroscope in the unit. Each is constantly measuring your body position and the rate at which that position changes. After millions of miles of rider data collected over several years, an algorithm has been perfected that can take data from those sensors and use it to tell when you’re having an accident. In certain kinds of accidents, the bag deploys, mitigating the number and extent of any injuries you might suffer.
Luckily, I would be able to experience the deployment without having to crash. My Alpinestars friend Alex Martino perched over his laptop, a wire running from it to my motorcycle jacket, which I was wearing at the time. He said, “Ready? Five, four, three, two, one …”
I had expected a major kaboom, something that would knock me to the floor of the Alpinestars headquarters where I was standing, or at least make the equivalent impression of a good gut punch. Instead, there was something akin to a muffled pop, and suddenly I was about twice as large as I used to be. Not Michelin Man large, but bigger. It was the argon charge inside my Tech-Air vest.
I had survived.
If it had been a real accident, the bag would have deployed 25 milliseconds after the system detected the accident. Once inflated, the vest remains rock solid for five seconds, then very slowly deflates over the course of about two minutes. Imagine you’ve ridden off a highway and were — God forbid — tumbling down a canyon for a hundred feet. Having the bag inflated there would be a help. You can still move around and use your arms just about as easily as you could before, too.
Price for the vest is $1,149.95; the Tailwind jacket I wore was $399.95. You can pick a different jacket if you like at alpinestars.com.
I also tried out another brand, the Dainese D-Air jacket, though without deploying it. Dainese likes to point out that it invented the wearable airbag 25 years ago and has been improving it ever since. The latest system is the D-Air Smart Jacket, which is actually not a jacket but a fully ventilated vest that can be worn underneath or even on top of any garment. It also has an array of sensors that detect when an accident is happening and inflate the vest to protect the rider’s torso.
Dainese says that the brain of the Smart Jacket is its triggering algorithm. The electronic central unit analyzes data transmitted by seven sensors 1,000 times per second and detects “dangerous situations.” When it sees one — pop! — it inflates the vest.
“Through two decades of development and extensive data collection, Dainese has refined its sophisticated D-Air algorithm to predict accidents, including stationary vehicles and stationary rider collisions,” the company said.
The Dainese Smart Jacket vest costs $699.
For the last year I’ve been wearing an older (1 year old) Dainese Cyclone jacket with the D-Air system integrated in it, and while it hasn’t deployed in that time (thank goodness) I have found it to be snug and reassuringly sturdy, holding my entire upper carcass firmly like God’s catcher’s mitt. Like the Tech-Air, it feels heavy and bulky before you put it on and mount your moto, but once on a bike, the weight seems to disappear. More modern Dainese jackets are on the market now, including the Carve Master 2 D-Air and many others. See dainese.com and pick one out.
There are other systems on the market, some that deploy when a tether is tugged off the motorcycle. Those tether systems generally deploy a little later than the above two systems, which do not require tethers.
Between the above two products that I tried out, I would say coverage looks more extensive with the Alpinestars vest, particularly on the tops of the shoulders, while I’ve found the fit of Dainese gear is a little more compatible with my particular torso. As with most gear choices, you should try them both and decide. Also, in both cases, it’s better to go into an authorized dealer’s store and try on a bunch of gear, since proper fit is an important part of getting safe riding apparel. And as for price, you can always go back to the old saw that it’s cheaper than the hospital bill you might have without it. So get good gear and use it every time you ride. Now go have fun!
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