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The 5 Most Interesting Gear Technologies Of 2019

Taking steps forward.

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Smart Helmets Made Moves In 2019

No matter what your personal feelings on smart helmets are, they’re coming, and some riders will love them. Many feature some (or all) of the following: cameras facing front and/or rear, GPS chips, gyroscopes, accelerometers, barometers, altimeters, heads-up displays (HUD), integrated Bluetooth communications.

Competition tends to drive innovation, so it’s been interesting to see how smart helmet makers have introduced and built up the relatively new market so far, and how they’ll advance into the future.

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Gear That Automatically Calls Emergency Services Came Forward

Say you’re not into the entire smart helmet experience just yet, and you simply want the comfort of knowing that if you’re in an accident and can’t call 911 yourself, some part of your gear can do it for you.

The Apple Watch already does this if you enable it—but of course, that means you have to have an Apple Watch in the first place. If you have and love one, that’s one thing, but not a lot of people will probably rush out to buy it just for this one feature.

One computer science student won an innovation prize, and plans to use the money to develop his helmet tech further. What’s most exciting about this isn’t Ty Uehara’s idea itself—rather, it’s the fact that Uehara and more inventors like him are thinking along these lines in the first place. The more talented minds we have working on solving these problems, the more tech keeps pushing forward.

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Bosch Announced Tech That Turns All Eyeglasses Into Heads-Up Devices

If you’re all-in on the HUD revolution, this light drive tech that Bosch will unveil at CES 2020 but announced in 2019 is pretty exciting. Those of us who need to wear eyeglasses to see will be especially appreciative that it’s meant to fit any eyeglasses, not just certain models.

We don’t have pricing or availability information yet, but having the choice of HUD separated out from your helmet choice is intriguing—particularly since everyone’s head is different, and a limited selection of HUD-enhanced helmets will inevitably leave someone out in terms of options.

Of course, if Bosch Light Drive units are extremely expensive, that might leave many of us out in a different way, but we don’t have that information yet. So for now, as 2019 ends, we’re still hopeful about it.

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More Gear Manufacturers Started Making Airbag Suits

As we noted above, competition helps keep niches healthy—and can drive innovation. The news that French gear maker Furygan teamed up with In&Motion to create new airbag suits intrigued us, because more selection in the airbag suit space can only be good for riders.

If you watch international motorcycle racing of any kind, or even just watch bike videos from elsewhere when you’re bored and trawling YouTube, you’re likely aware of the vast array of gear that’s available elsewhere. Furygan has been around for a long time, even if they’re not super well-known on these shores, and hopefully other gear makers will follow.

Speaking of which…

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Dainese Decided Women Needed D-Air Gear Too … In 2019

Can we please have a slow clap for Dainese? After 22 years of development—during several of which, men had the benefit of D-Air protection made readily available—Dainese finally remembered that some riders are women, and they might like the added safety of D-Air gear, too.

In 2019. Yes, I mentioned that in the header for this slide, but I feel it bears repeating, because why are we still even having this conversation?

Even non-moto-centric publications, on slow news days, have been falling all over themselves to note that more women are riding than ever before, and that encouraging women and younger riders (and women who are younger riders, because yes, you can actually be both at the same time) is part of how the motorcycle industry can save itself.

Seriously, I’ve seen variations on this theme show up in business publications like Marketwatch and elsewhere for at least the past year, if not longer. If the business heads—who may or may not care about motorcycling, but most certainly care about numbers—can take note of this, then why did it take Dainese so long?

This is hardly just a Dainese problem, either. Other gear manufacturers could also stand to improve in this area. If you’re a woman who rides, you know this—and if you know women who ride, just ask them. Maybe that’s what we can hope for in 2020: Instead of making broad assumptions about what women, young riders, and people of color (and again, you can be all three at once, believe me) want, maybe both gear and bike makers could try asking their target demos and then developing from there? It’s a thought.

Have a happy and safe New Year, everyone, and here’s to more excellent and intriguing moves forward, in gear and throughout the motorcycling niche, in 2020.

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Dec 31, 2019 at 1:49pm ET

By: Janaki Jitchotvisut

If you’re an ATGATT rider, you’re likely familiar enough with gear to know that it changes at a fairly glacial pace. There’s enough competition for our protection dollars to keep manufacturers roughly at a pace with one another, and when some major leap happens, you see first one and then more gear makers hop on board that train.

What that means is that, if you take a long view, there’s tons of interesting advances to look at. A shorter-term window, such as a single year, might see movement of a slower kind. Still, when we’re talking about our personal protection as we’re out riding, it’s worth knowing and appreciating what’s available. Let’s gear up, then dive into what 2019 had to offer us.