From: James Franz <zxcvNoSpam@NoSpaminame.com>
Subject: BMW: A sign of things to come?

This is a long post, and it does have BMW content.

While I was at a local used book store yesterday, I found
_Rider-Passenger_Protection_in_Motorcycle_Collisions_ published by the SAE
for their International Congress and Exposition in Detroit on Feb 26 to Mar
2, 1990.  I thumbed through it and saw that it has papers on airbags and leg
protectors for bikes, so I picked it up to see what all the fuss is about
first hand.

"Appropriate and Inappropriate Strategies for Injury Reduction in Motorcycle
Accidents" (SAE # 900747, by James V. Ouellet from the University of
Southern California) starts out discussing that helmets work and refrences
to the Hurt study, Bothwell's _Quest_for_Safety_, and other SAE papers.  It
then goes into motorcycle-mounted protection, starting with lap belts.  In
1968-69, Dr. Peter Bothwell of England studied the issue and concluded that
lap belts greatly increased the risk of injury.  Shortly after Bothwell's
tests, Severy, Brink and Blaisdell conducted 7 crash tests and concluded
that air bags would be beneficial.

Bothwell then put that suggestion to test using an airbag that projected
upwards from the gas tank.  The airbag worked well on perpendicular impacts
with stationary cars, were "only marginally effective" in an off-set impact
with a stationary car, and were "nearly useless" when impacting a moving car.

The problem in the 2 latter tests was found to be that the motorcycle would
pivot around and the rider would not hit the airbag.  To prevent the
pivoting, a "pitch-roll-yaw control structure" (a "tubular steel truss" that
projected beyond the front wheel and weighed 37 lbs (17 kg)) was added to
the bike.  The first test of the structure actually worstened the pivoting
and gouged a hole in the car door.  In later tests, they reinforced the car
door to prevent the gouged hole  ;-)

They noted that the crash dummy was still free to move around in a crash, so
they welded a 43 lb (20 kg) roll cage to the rear of the bike.  To quote:
"The tall, heavy, rear-mounted structure made the motorcycle so prone to
falling over that 2 people were needed to roll it about.  In addition, such
a structure would greatly reduce the speed at which the motorcycle would go
into a divergent weave mode instability and crash."  Both the front truss
and the roll cage were found to not work and failed to get the air bag to
"perform in a worthwhile manner."  They concluded "adding more and more
structures [to improve m/c crashworthiness] does _not_ work (emphesis theirs)."

The final paragraph on p. 51 says "Peterson, the principal investigator of
these crash tests, virtually admitted that crashworthiness strategies
involving adding protective structures to the machine should not be applied
to motorcycles as presently configured. Instead, he suggested, a whole new
class of two-wheeled light weight commuter vehicles should be developed
which incorporated crashworthiness principles as an integral part of their
design."

What does this have to do with anything?  The study found that those safety
devices don't work for motorcycles "as presently configured" and that a
"whole new class of 2 wheeled vehicles" be developed with crashworhiness in
mind.  Remember BMW's new C1?  The frame of the C1 looks remarkably like a
picture (on p. 51) of the test bike with truss and roll cage.  I went to
BMW's C1 site www.bike.bmw.com/english/latestnews/latestnews/index.html
They state: "In the C1 Studio you can find out what BMW understands by
future mobility and what part the C1 will play in it."  Also, "the BMW C1 is
a fundamentally new vehicle design."  

While I don't think motorcycles as we know them will be eliminated, it does
cause one pause for thought.  Harley has lost a few court cases about leg
protection, so how long after the C1 comes to market will a lawyer decide to
go after conventional motorcycles as unsafe?  If a manufacturer can make a
"safe" bike, why would it continue to make unsafe ones?  A young, ambitous
politician could ask the same question in Congress, Parliament, where ever.
I think the C1 has brought a new can of worms to the table and it won't be
too long until someone opens it.      


        
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== James Franz   Lone Star BMW Riders             ==    
== Dallas Texas  BMW Motorcycle Owners of America ==
== 1979 R65      Internet BMW Riders              ==
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