After A Century—Airbags For Cyclists?

The first US-made automobiles with airbags were introduced in the mid-1970s.  The pneumatic restraints became common about two decades later and mandatory in 1998. However, the innovation is just over a century old: In 1919, Harold Round and Arthur Parrott of Birmingham, England filed a patent, which was approved the following year, in the United States.

(Interestingly, the airbag’s inventors were dentists. If they’d marketed their device, it would’ve made a fun ad slogan:  The Round Parrott takes the bite out of crashes!)

It took another three decades, however, for someone to patent a version for use in automobiles. John W. Hetrick, an industrial engineer, came up with the idea of a bag that would inflate on bumper impact after working on Navy torpedoes. Unfortunately, he became one of many who didn’t profit from his work:  No auto company wanted to finance it, and his patent expired just before Ford installed it on a few experimental cars.

That leads me to wonder whether the product I’m about to describe had a similar fate. Evoc Sports of Germany has just introduced its Commute Air Pro 18.  

It’s a set of football-style shoulder pads designed to inflate within 0.02 seconds after an impact is detected. They are intended to protect a cyclist’s neck, shoulders, chest and collarbone—the last of which is the site of frequent and painful injuries. The sensor is activated by an electronic magnetic buckle on the waistband. It can be unbuckled so that the rider can bend over (say, to pick up his or her bike) without deploying the airbags. The bags themselves are re-usable but, after they are inflated, the CO2 cartridge will need replacement.

The device is contained in a backpack that has enough room for a laptop and more. When it reaches the market next year, it’s expected to go for 900 Euros (about $1065 at current rates). I hope that a.) the price comes down, b.) it’s as effective at preventing injuries as it’s claimed to be and c.) its inventor benefits more from it than John Hetrick did from automotive air bags.

By Another Name

Photo by Charlie Kaijo, from the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazzette

We’ve all heard Juliet’s plea to Romeo: “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

There are entire academic sub-disciplines based on a negation of that premise.  So, what I am about to describe is ironic to me, as someone who’s been in the academic world.

When I worked in bike shops, I was classified, and described myself, as an assembler or mechanic.  The same can be said for others who did that work.  The other bike shop employees in shops—usually the larger ones—were salespeople and managers.  In smaller shops, though, employees (and, sometimes, the proprietor) wore multiple hats. Nearly all of us learned on the job:  Little, if any, formal training was available.

That last facet of the industry is changing.  Organizations like the United Bicycle Institute hold training programs and camps.  And community colleges—most recently Northwest Arkansas Community College—have launched programs to prepare students for the bike industry.

What has brought about this development?  Well, I think that one reason is that bicycles are increasingly included in transportation and infrastructure planning.  No one can argue any longer that adult cycling is a passing fad or a recreational activity for the privileged.

I believe there’s another another reason why academic institutions are seeing that the bicycle is not just a way to get around campus or an option to fill a Physical Education requirement—and that preparing students for a career in the industry is a worthy endeavor.  You see, now colleges like Northwest Arkansas and Minnesota State College Southeast are training bicycle technicians.

Now, in a way I can understand the name change: There is more technology, not only in design, but also in making, assembling and repairing new bikes and components than there was when I worked in shops.

I have to wonder, though:  Would the trajectory of my life have been different if I’d been a bicycle technician?

Whose Orders Would I Have Followed?

Years ago, someone tried to convince me to join a rowing team--what we call "crew" in the States.

Up to that time, I'd rowed maybe a couple of times in my life.  She didn't see that as a disqualifier.  If anything, she said, my other athletic pursuits, including cycling, would help. "People don't realize how important the legs are in rowing," she said.

She had a point.  She'd spent a lot of time with the rowing team:  She was its coxswain.

And, as  inexperienced as I was with oars, I'd spent more time with them than she'd spent on a bicycle:  She'd never learned how to ride. 

Oh, perhaps I should mention that we were dating.

I politely declined.

Our relationship didn't last much longer.

What if I had followed her "suggestion"--or she had learned how to ride?

From Stockphoto

  

Twenty Years Later

If you don't remember where you were and what you were doing on this date twenty years ago, you either were in solitary confinement or of the generation after the children I would've had, had I been so inclined.

Perhaps the unluckiest people in the history of this city were the ones who went to work and didn't make it home.  In addition to firefighters, police officers and other first responders, and the folks who worked in and around the World Trade Center towers, they included messengers and others who made deliveries on bicycles. 

Photo by Jin Lee, from the 9/11 Memorial website

Their bikes were among those attached to a rack found mostly intact on Vesey Street.  The moment of the attack--8:46 am--would have been a busy time for them, as many office workers were arriving and those already at their desks were ready for, say, a bagel and a cup of coffee. The rack and bikes were largely shielded from debris by 5 World Trade Center, which remained partly intact after 1 WTC was struck.

A year after the attacks, only one bicycle had been retrieved.  The others, and the rack, are among the displays in the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

During the past week, the remains of two people who perished that day were finally identified.  More than a thousand victims' remains have yet to be identified.  Among them may be the messengers and delivery workers who pedaled those bicycles through the canyons walled with glass, steel and concrete and floored with asphalt.  Sadly, those folks, who brought everything from documents to donuts, might never be identified, as some of them may well have been alone in this city, in this country, on one of its most terrifying days.

She Deserves A Smoother Road

Tomorrow will mark 20 years since the deadliest terror attack on US soil.  During the commemorations, there will be much talk of "heroes."  And that awful day produced many, some of whom didn't survive the day. 

I will say more about them tomorrow. (Don't worry:  The post will relate to bicycling as well as that terrible event.)  Today, though, I want talk about another hero who had yet to be born on that day. 

Jyoti Kumari, self-portrait

 

Jyoti Kumari bought a purple bicycle for the equivalent of $20.  Unlike other 15-year-olds, however, she didn't pedal it to school or work.  Instead, she used it to bring her father home.

To say that was no small feat was an understatement.  Mohan Paswan was a big man, carrying a big bag.  A migrant worker had been injured on a job near New Delhi, about 1200 kilometers (700 miles) from his family's home. Compounding the difficulty of that situation was the lockdowns, then some of the world's strictest, that had been imposed on India.  So, even if he could've worked, there was no work for him.  He was stranded, broke, just as India and the world were plunging into the abyss of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Home, for him and Ms. Kumari, was a village near the Nepalese border.  Their journey would take them along a route where people younger and healthier than Mohan died in the brutal heat, or were run down by trucks or trains.  And there would be few places where he and Jyoti could find food or water.

Still, Kumari managed to bring her father home.  She pedaled all the way back, with her father riding in back.  Along the way, some locals jeered or castigated her for pedaling while her father sat.  But others offered help, including the use of their cell phones so she could let her mother know she and her father were on their way.

After they arrived, she garnered a lot of media attention, from the likes of people and outlets far bigger and more famous than yours truly.  The Prime Minister gave her the National Children's Award, which included a medal and about $1300.  There were offers and promises of jobs, scholarships and other kinds of help.  And Onkar Singh, the chairman of the Cycling Federation of India, invited her to a tryout for the national team, which could mean a trip to the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Singh's offer still stands. Kumari, however, is more anxious to finish her studies (understandable, especially given that she comes from a lower-caste family).  To do that, she would need to catch up on academic work she missed while helping to care for her father.  She has been taking some lessons from a local teacher, but her village's school remains closed.  

And some of the offers and promises of help were not fulfilled.  So, while her family were able to build a bigger house with water and toilet connections and sustain themselves for a while, some of the money was used to pay off debts.  Now "the funds are drying up," explains Mukesh Kumari Paswan, Kumari's brother-in-law.  He was an X-ray technician but, like everyone else in his family, is out of work. "We don't know what to do now," he says.

As if the family weren't facing enough difficulties, her mother isn't well and minor physical activity leaves her out of breath.  Worst of all, in May--one year after Kumari brought her father home--he died of cardiac arrest.  

Whether or not Jyoti Kumari takes up Onkar Singh on his offer, one can only hope that the road ahead is less difficult for her and her family isn't as difficult as it's been.  Any teenage girl who can pedal her father home through the conditions she endured certainly deserves better!