Alpinestars shows off its first dedicated active airbag vest engineered specifically for us off-road riders. Developed primarily for Dakar racing competition, the vest is also designed for dirt bike riders seeking more protection than what’s typically available in the space (chest protector, etc). Say hello to the Tech-Air Off-Road Active Airbag Vest.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Alright folks, here we are at the official Alpine Stars Tech Air Off-Road
00:06 press introduction near Death Valley, California. As you can see we had some
00:13 wintertime moisture which made for some really nice trail conditions as you can
00:19 see by the brown, the wetness inside the dirt that is ahead of us. We are
00:24 operating our 2024 Honda Transalp XL 750 while wearing Alpine Stars new Tech Air
00:34 Off-Road. This is an active wearable airbag system that helps protect you in
00:42 the event of a high G impact. Now Alpine Stars has been crafting its Tech Air
00:53 technology. Really the Tech Air story started in the early 2000s when it
01:00 started doing research on the concept with a lot of its road racing athletes.
01:06 Fast forward to 2014 and the Tech Air race was unveiled. That was a production
01:15 airbag, supplemental airbag that you could wear inside your motorcycle
01:21 leathers. Over the years Alpine Stars has introduced a variety of different Tech
01:28 Air applications. Tech Air 3, Tech Air 5, Tech Air 10 which is the modern
01:35 road racing version that now includes hip protection. And now for 2024 it's
01:42 introducing its off-road specific Tech Air Off-Road. This is designed for all of
01:49 us ADV adventure touring and even dirt biking off-road riders who want some
01:56 supplemental protection in the form of an airbag. This helps keep us safe when
02:02 we're riding off-highway. Now this garment basically it's something you
02:10 wear. It's almost like an integrated chest protector, back protector, and
02:15 shoulder and for I'm sorry elbow protector. So it's basically a vest that
02:21 you wear. It weighs right around just over six pounds. Just over six pounds in
02:28 size medium. We are wearing a size large. We stand at six foot tall, 205 pounds and
02:37 the size large fits us really nicely. Whoa got a little hot here. Turn a little
02:44 bit and there we go.
02:47 So that is a rundown of the Tech Air Off-Road. This particular system has a
02:55 variety of settings that you can tweak. So if you're riding in a rally style
03:02 environment you can click the rally setting. If you're riding in an
03:07 off-road style environment, think enduro, you can click the enduro setting. And
03:13 that just allows the the programming of the airbags electronics to more
03:20 accurately control when it reaches a certain threshold where the
03:29 airbag would deploy. So that is the whole point of that. Now this garment is real
03:35 flexible. Basically you can wear it bare skinned so you have no
03:41 undershirt on or you can wear an undershirt or you can wear it over your
03:45 jersey or under your jersey. I have it configured where I'm wearing a base
03:50 layer. So I'm wearing an Alpinestars winter riding base layer which keeps you
03:55 a little bit warmer. It also keeps any any of the pads from rubbing on your
04:00 skin. Not that they do but just it gives you a barrier. So I have the Tech Air
04:06 winter riding top. Then I have the Alpinestars Tech Air off-road. And then
04:12 I'm wearing this Alpinestars Bogota Adventure Touring jacket. This is a
04:18 full-length ADV jacket. I've removed the insulated warm liner and
04:24 the rain liner because obviously it's dry today. The Tech Air off-road, while
04:31 the material has perforation and it's made to flow air and breathe air, just
04:37 because of the large chest protector, that large integrated chest protector
04:42 and the large integrated back protector, you're gonna have some heat retention in
04:47 this vest. So that's why I really removed those liners. You have to remember even
04:53 though it's a nice sunny day the ambient air temperature right now is right
04:57 around 52 degrees. So not the warmest but also not the coldest. And with that
05:03 Alpinestars base layer top and the Tech Air off-road and this Bogota jacket with
05:10 all the ventilation closed with no insulated liner or rain liner, I'm pretty
05:15 comfortable at this temperature. Now the Tech Air off-road, it's really easy to
05:22 charge. It charges from 0% battery in right around four hours. You charge it
05:28 with a conventional household 120 volt power via USB-C cable and it has 30
05:36 hours of runtime. So 30 hours of runtime. Now inside this Tech Air off-road vest
05:43 there is a series of sensors. We have three accelerometers, three gyro
05:51 gyrometers and what that does is that basically gives the vest positional
05:57 awareness on the road. So the vest knows where your body is in relation to the
06:03 road and it's able to to quantify the potential for big impacts coming and
06:09 deploy that airbag vest in as little as 30 millisecond. So that's faster than
06:16 blink of an eye. So the programming of Tech Air off-road allows the electronics
06:24 to predict when the airbag is going to need to deploy and it deploys before you
06:32 have your insane accident to help cushion your vital body organs to help
06:37 you from getting seriously injured. One of the European journalists yesterday
06:44 she was operating her KTM 890 Adventure R. She had a little mistake and she
06:51 actually kind of like low-sided. It was kind of crazy. I saw the end of it and I
06:57 heard it and her airbag deployed and she was totally fine. So sometimes I kind of
07:02 wonder I'm like why would she even want Tech Air off-road? Just ride more
07:07 carefully or ride slower to mitigate chances of an accident or potential
07:12 injury. But when you're riding you just never know what's gonna happen and
07:16 that really that that little mishap that she had really proved the advantage of
07:20 Tech Air off-road. You never know what's gonna happen. She had a little low side
07:25 and airbag deployed and she was totally fine. Bike was pretty okay too. So
07:29 definitely this $1,000 piece of wearable technology has the potential to
07:36 mitigate injury. In fact the the Alpinestars Dakar Racing team, Skyler
07:46 Howes, Toby Price, Ricky Brabeck, they all swear by Alpinestars Tech Air off-road.
07:53 They won't they say they won't ride their dirt bike without it. So pretty
07:57 interesting technology here. So the air bladder gives you chest, neck, back, and
08:06 shoulder protection. The system has two canisters so you can have two there's
08:14 two charges. So let's say you crash twice in one day you will be covered because
08:19 there's two deployments in the airbag system. The internal air bladder allows
08:26 for four deployments in total so you can use the airbag system four times and
08:30 then you have to replace the internal air bladder that's the service life for
08:35 durations of coverage. Now the Alpinestars spent a lot of time making
08:43 the user experience a little bit easier and now riders can actually replace the
08:49 gas cartridges themselves. How crazy is that? You basically pop off the rear
08:54 cover and there's a series of gas cartridges positioned vertically in
09:01 parallel. So you disconnect the connectors and you pull that one out
09:05 you replace the new one. The connectors and the the rear mount only go in one
09:10 way so you really can't screw it up. So now you could just simply if you have a
09:15 deployment you can go home or go to your shop and replace the canisters really
09:20 easily by yourself. The bladder you're still gonna have to send to Alpinestars
09:24 to get replaced every four discharges. So a little bit more durability and a
09:32 little bit more ease of servicing for all of you crashers out there. Alright
09:39 folks here we are this is when the real off-road madness begins. Six-time AMA
09:47 Supercross champion Jeff Stanton he likes to call this bushwhacking. So we're
09:53 about to go bushwhacking through this desert area so we'll see how it is.
10:03 And we're in fresh tracks clean desert tracks. Yes this is sick!
10:10 Riding Honda XL 750 Transalp off these ridges is a blast. What a hoot this thing
10:22 is to ride. Alright folks there's Chad Reed 22 on his KTM blowing up berms.
10:30 Hey you still got it buddy! You still got it!
10:43 Whoa crazy I love those ridge rises they're really scary but also super fun.
10:51 I feel like a kid again. Well folks that wraps up our official review of
10:56 Alpinestars Tech Air off-road vest. We covered a lot of miles on and off road
11:01 and we got to see Tech Air off-road in action. It saved a number of
11:07 participants today especially in the sand dunes. The sand dunes are going a
11:12 lot faster and the loads are a lot higher and everyone walked away with a
11:17 big smile on their face which proves Tech Air off-road did its job. Tech Air
11:25 off-road is really cool it's easy to use it's not too constrictive but you
11:29 definitely feel the size of the back protector to the chest protector and for
11:34 a thousand dollars if you're looking for the ultimate in off-road safety and
11:38 protection for everyone who likes to ride off-road and adventure tour Tech Air
11:43 off-road is a good solution. A thousand dollars yeah it's not the cheapest
11:48 product out there but you can't put a price on safety and being able to go
11:52 home and go to work on a Monday morning. As always folks make sure to
11:57 head on over to MotorcyclistOnline.com that's where all of our written
12:00 content comes to life. Give this video a thumbs up if you liked it thumbs it down
12:04 if you didn't because we'd love to hear from the naysayers. Everyone's
12:09 opinion counts here we are an inclusive organization and we'll see you in the
12:12 next episode folks thanks for riding with us
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