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May 4, 2021 02:34
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Yuns posted:I'm not scared of riding or else I wouldn't have kept street riding in LA, DC, NYC etc. for 32 or so years. I can control my own riding although I can't control those around me. But the decision to not ride with my wife is not purely about the probability of risk but the consequences. I don't back country snowboard with my wife either. I would engage is activities with my spouse where the risk of injury or death is independent. For example, sky diving if we were to join our friends who were really into that. But not where the risk is inherently linked like backcountry avy risk in snowboarding/skiing. Yeah, this exactly. My way of thinking about it is this: on a motorcycle, I’m the sole person responsible for my wife’s safety in addition to mine. Now that the consequences of our theoretical simultaneous death or incapacitation are much greater than when we were childless, my risk/reward threshold has been firmly crossed. We’re both still fine with me riding, I’d be fine with her riding on her own, but both of us doing a risky thing in which I am the only person in control is more than I’m willing to do. I also won’t take her whitewater rafting in big stuff or backcountry snow stuff.
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May 4, 2021 02:39
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but have you all performed the risk calculus of becoming a total square if you quit motorcycles? it really makes you think
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May 4, 2021 03:08
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The future is here and it fills me with burning rage.
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May 4, 2021 03:14
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Slavvy posted:The future is here and it fills me with burning rage.
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May 4, 2021 03:30
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this is what I came to post but the future of everything is going to be subscription based and I'm not ok with that Slavvy posted:The future is here and it fills me with burning rage.
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May 4, 2021 03:42
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I've never owned a motor vehicle before my motorcycle. Prior to that, I was, and remain, a cyclist. I've lived in major US cities with little to no biking infrastructure, notoriously distracted drivers, and barely any law enforcement. I've had several collisions with cars, the worst requiring a trip to the ER and crutches for several weeks. My main calculation in getting a motorcycle was simply that I wanted to cover more ground than I could on a bicycle. I know I would be safer if I took public transit. But it's not always an option, and I'm willing to exchange some safety for greater convenience and enjoyment. I don't think that "something terrible can't happen to me," but rather the opposite -- my concerns about the worst case scenario govern how I dress, where I ride, and whether I choose to ride at all. I saw this article today that rammed home just how easily roads can turn dangerous and have life-changing consequences, even for people in cars: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/05/car-accident/618766/ I think roadways would benefit if every user had a healthy concern for their own mortality.
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May 4, 2021 05:30
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So i went poking around and it looks like it's the "cheapest" air bag vest on the face of it and you can either buy a subscription for 12/m forever and have warranty services for life OR for $400 your vest just works and you have 2 years of warranty. It's nice they give you the option, so the real cost is $800, but tbe other big kicker to me are the reloading cans are $100 each. gently caress that.
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May 4, 2021 06:01
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Slavvy posted:the only way a car is safer is in sheer impact resistance. I take the view that avoiding impacts is the safest strategy and I'd rather have a small, agile thing with perfect visibility than a bunker anyone else can ram with their own bunker. A number of years ago I saw a study comparing safety attitudes in the USA and Europe. They asked European people what made a car safe, and they predominantly said things like: strong brakes, good handling, good visibility. Then they asked Americans the same question and they said: big and heavy, solid steel, as many airbags as possible. To me this suggests that Europeans see crashes as something that can be avoided with quick reactions and skill, while Americans see crashes as inevitable and just want to be in the biggest, heaviest tank so they can smash through the other guy like a freight train.
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May 4, 2021 06:05
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Europeans are buying suvs by the shipload too nowadays. They have obviously seen the error of their ways.
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May 4, 2021 06:10
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Ryan Fortnine did a video on airbags a few months ago and that was one of the reasons he promoted the least expensive one that's just tethered to the bike Klim lists the vest at $400 US and then I'm guessing the subscription fee (or the $400 gently caress-your-subscription fee) is an adder on top of that? If it was $400 alone it'd be by far the cheapest airbag vest, so that's unlikely to be the case.
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May 4, 2021 06:55
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Russian Bear posted:Europeans are buying suvs by the shipload too nowadays. They have obviously seen the error of their ways. Yah but they're like, super agile suv's with race track tyre profiles, manhole covers for brakes, a hundred computers and 500hp. Can't have something that weighs two tons be slow and clumsy, that might make you look really loving stupid driving one!
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May 4, 2021 07:03
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Nah it's mostly Nissan quashqai and some Renault thing.
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May 4, 2021 08:23
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Russian Bear posted:Nah it's mostly Nissan quashqai and some Renault thing. Some renault thing yeah 
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May 4, 2021 08:44
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Slavvy posted:Sagebrush I would put my toddler in your light aircraft without hesitation, assuming it's fixed wing and hasn't got a car/bike engine. Not that an engine failure is the only thing which can go wrong in an aircraft, but in that specific case I would choose a rotary over fixed wing any day of the week.
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May 4, 2021 09:37
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Sagebrush posted:A number of years ago I saw a study comparing safety attitudes in the USA and Europe. Europeans want good handling and visibility to avoid the Americans driving their death tanks.
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May 4, 2021 10:54
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So if the KLIM/I-M server is down for maintenance, and the vest tries to do its check and it 404s, the vest won't work, even if you have paid your subscriptions. This is the dumbest loving thing, Internet-Of-making GBS threads safety equipment. gently caress Klim, gently caress I-M. I had been considering some Klim gear, but no loving way now. Will likely eventually get a Helite Turtle/Turtle 2.
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May 4, 2021 12:37
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The use case can't possible be to do random license spot-checks on the go when you can't be assured of any WiFi or cell signal, right? I hate everything about this but I will hate it so much more if it's not "according to the clock your license has expired and next time you power on the jacket it won't work" but rather "we're halfway through your ride and the clock says your license ran out but we can't check status right now so good luck without an airbag" At least let me believe it's the former. Please don't reply if you know for a fact it's the latter.
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May 4, 2021 12:44
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https://www.klim.com/Ai-1-Airbag-Vest-3046-000 "QUICK-START GUIDE Step 1. Buy the vest (The In&Box Detection Module will ship with the vest) Step 2. Download the “My In&Box” phone app Step 3. Create your account. You can either purchase the module outright or choose one of the subscription plans. 3a. Choose from $12/month or $120/year subscription options, which include unlimited In&Box warranty, anytime cancellations, VIP support services, and a new In&Box after 3 years. 3b. Or choose the $399 one-time purchasing option which includes 2-year warranty and classic support services. 3c. All purchasing options include continuous algorithm updates and mobile app dashboard interface. Step 4. Pair your In&Box and Ai-1 Airbag Vest Step 5. Ride!"  It's worse, it needs you to have your smartphone on, with you, with internet working, with the app installed, paired with the vest, allowing the vest to beep-boop the server to get the Green Light that your airbag has been paid for this month before it will work.
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May 4, 2021 13:00
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-JA1ffd5Ms
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May 4, 2021 13:06
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Steakandchips posted:https://www.klim.com/Ai-1-Airbag-Vest-3046-000 Holy poo poo is this ridiculous. Imagine trusting a mobile app to arm your airbag
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May 4, 2021 14:14
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I have to assume the subscription heartbeat has a grace period where it just pings out monthly to say "yeah the next 30 days are good," and if it can't, it notifies you that you need to connect it up so it can refresh for another month. But there's nothing on their site to indicate that, so holy poo poo.
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May 4, 2021 15:00
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Holy poo poo is this ridiculous. Can you imagine the kind of lowest bidder code is in that app? I really don't know why they think the liability risk is worth the monthly subscription reward. I really think it's awesome that the dystopian future exaggerated humor gags from 90s movies are becoming reality. That's great. What's next, 3 seashells?
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May 4, 2021 15:05
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BMW would have been doing this in their cars for years already if airbags weren't federally mandated.
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May 4, 2021 15:31
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There's no way it's checking license status at the time of impact, it's got to be setting a flag for the whole ride when you turn it on. Someone should decompile the app and take a look.
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May 4, 2021 15:51
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MomJeans420 posted:There's no way it's checking license status at the time of impact, it's got to be setting a flag for the whole ride when you turn it on. Someone should decompile the app and take a look. I'm picturing this except with latency and the airbag going off as the rider is just lying prone in the street
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May 4, 2021 16:20
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Martytoof posted:I'm picturing this except with latency and the airbag going off as the rider is just lying prone in the street Right as the EMT is taking the helmet off after stabilizing the neck... POOMB!
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May 4, 2021 16:34
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MomJeans420 posted:There's no way it's checking license status at the time of impact, it's got to be setting a flag for the whole ride when you turn it on. Someone should decompile the app and take a look. Yeah it's physically impossible for it to be doing checks before actually firing the airbag - even without the liability nightmare of the thing failing to go off because it's Apple update day round-trip-time on a mobile network to just about anywhere in the internet can be in the hundreds of milliseconds, when airbags have to deploy in the tens of milliseconds. From the description it sounds like it needs to be paired every <x> days in order to keep working and they've presumably got a big IF YOU DONT DO THIS IT WONT WORK disclaimer in the Ts and Cs.
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May 4, 2021 16:40
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It looks like it has a separate controller that you need to keep charged so I’m betting it’s got some kind of long-life realtime clock that can keep track of the subscription after initial pairing but you’d need to sync with your app prior to any ride if your subscription lapsed. If I were designing this shitbag of a system I guess that would make the most sense to me. And then I’d go jump off a bridge for being a garbage human being.
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May 4, 2021 16:46
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The Russians just used a buckwheat neck pillow.
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May 4, 2021 16:51
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Steakandchips posted:So if the KLIM/I-M server is down for maintenance, and the vest tries to do its check and it 404s, the vest won't work, even if you have paid your subscriptions.
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May 4, 2021 17:43
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Subscription model safety is hilarious. It’s also really unclear how much it’ll cost when buying it. It’s not just Klim, All the airbags aside from Helite, Dianese and Alpinestars use the InMotion system. The TechAir line lacks any subscription fwiw, and as far as I can tell, only needs the jacket done up to arm it. But I’ve not had an opportunity to use it outside of my living room. Not as reliable as a tether system (arguably, I can barely remember to turn the fuel petcock on and take my keys out of my ignition; let alone plug in the tether). But the Helite vests are noticeably bulkier.
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May 4, 2021 18:15
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Here4DaGangBang posted:Not that an engine failure is the only thing which can go wrong in an aircraft, but in that specific case I would choose a rotary over fixed wing any day of the week. ??? How does that work? My child's brain leads me to believe a fixed wing plane with a dead engine can somewhat glide under the pilot's control, while a helicopter with a blown engine goes into an uncontrolled death spiral. Statistically they fall out of the sky way more often but that might be more to do with the human side of things.
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May 4, 2021 19:40
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Autorotation? Helicopters are designed so that the main rotor can spin freely if the engine shits the bed. Air moving up through the rotor of the falling helicopter is enough to spin the blades and create lift, and the tailrotor doesn't need to be engaged here because no real torque is transmitted to the helicopter like during powered flight. So in theory the helicopter can sort of flutter down to the ground. (In practice there's other poo poo that can go wrong, like the rotors getting hosed up. I imagine a helicopter suffers even a partial loss of one blade worse than an airplane suffers loss of some of the wing area.) Meanwhile gliding aircraft have forward speed that has to get dealt with at some point. It can be too much for a safe landing, or too little to maneuver to secure a safe landing.
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May 4, 2021 19:52
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Phy posted:Autorotation? Helicopters are designed so that the main rotor can spin freely if the engine shits the bed. Air moving up through the rotor of the falling helicopter is enough to spin the blades and create lift, and the tailrotor doesn't need to be engaged here because no real torque is transmitted to the helicopter like during powered flight. So in theory the helicopter can sort of flutter down to the ground. Ok but can the pilot control autorotation? Cause that sounds like a really nice euphemism for uncontrolled death spiral. Where does an autogyro land on this? Are they the best of both worlds?
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May 4, 2021 19:55
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I'm fast approaching the limits of my knowledge since I'm not a heli pilot, but yeah the speed of autorotation (and therefore descent) should be controllable by the collective. There's three main controls on a helicopter (plus the throttle): Cyclic, collective, and pedals. The cyclic looks like a flight stick and controls the pitch of individual blades at a certain point around their rotation. This is what makes the helicopter move forward/backward/side-to-side. The collective, down by the side of the seat, changes the pitch of all the blades at once, that's what gets more or less lift and causes the heli to climb or sink. And the pedals work like the rudder in a plane, they control the pitch of the tailrotor (so like a second collective) which is normally always turning to counteract the torque created by the powered main rotor. I don't know if the cyclic is useable in any significant fashion once you're in autorotation, and I expect that any failure in the controls is about as bad as it would be for the elevators or the ailerons to stop working on a gliding airplane. I think autogyros don't generally have a collective, but they're naturally autorotating all the time, that's how they work. The rotor isn't powered, only the propeller. Cut the motor and it'll just keep doing what it was already doing. I imagine they're not in more use because they don't offer the true point-to-point flight or hovering of a helicopter or the speed of an airplane.
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May 4, 2021 20:18
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3v7eERUruQ&t=120s Helicopters can do this too but gyros are at a major advantage because a) they weigh less than a slice of bread and b) because the main rotor is freewheeling by design they have many fewer possible failure modes, and there's almost no chance of the main rotor seizing and causing total loss of lift.
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May 4, 2021 20:44
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Right so if the engine fails, so you can control the speed of the fall but not where you go. Whereas in a plane you control where you go but not how fast you get there. I've seen a few small planes up close and they all seem to have cable operated control surfaces which I guess are independent of power etc. No idea how small helis do it. It sounds like the autogyro is the aircraft we need, not the aircraft we want. The flying gn250.
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May 4, 2021 20:48
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Helicopters and airplanes can both "glide" to the ground in the case of engine failure. You maintain full control of the aircraft in both cases, and can maneuver however you like except that you can't climb (duh) and you have to control your airspeed carefully. Airplanes with the engine out just glide, trading altitude to maintain airspeed. You can pull the engine to idle in midair and nothing happens; the plane just slowly starts to descend but you barely feel it otherwise. In a small Cessna, at best glide (minimum drag) speed, you have about a 9:1 glide ratio -- 9 feet forwards for every foot you descend. So if your engine fails at 3000 AGL, you can glide forwards about 27000 feet before touching down, or 4.5 nautical miles. Vg in a plane like that is 60-65 knots, so you have roughly as many minutes as you do miles. Four minutes isn't a long time, but it's plenty to pick a decent landing site and turn for it, attempt to restart the engine, make emergency calls, and plan out your approach. Helicopters autorotate as discussed above; the air travels up through the rotor and keeps it spinning, which makes it continue to generate lift. Their "glide ratio" in autorotation is under 4:1. They also generally fly much lower than airplanes. If you're skimming along in your helicopter at say 1500 feet and you have an engine out, you have under 60 seconds before you're on the ground. You can still maneuver in that time, but because you're descending at a steeper angle and are closer to the ground, you have much more limited options for landing sites. Of course the helicopter can also land in a soccer field or an empty parking lot no problem, so that sort of balances out. But you still have far less time to react. It's also worth noting that a light aircraft in a full-stall, soft-field landing will be touching down at like 30-40 knots. That's slower than a car on the highway. There isn't very much energy involved and as long as the plane stays upright and doesn't smash directly into a wall, a forced landing is very survivable. In the ideal situation it's a non-event, just another grass field landing as far as the plane is concerned. Phy posted:Meanwhile gliding aircraft have forward speed that has to get dealt with at some point. It can be too much for a safe landing, or too little to maneuver to secure a safe landing. You can never run out of airspeed if you fly the plane properly. First thing that happens in an engine failure is you pitch for Vg and trim it to stay there. The plane stays at its minimum-drag airspeed, in full control, and your descent rate is whatever it is (about 650-700 fpm). You can keep 60 knots right to the ground and maneuver wherever you like. Then you flare and arrest your descent rate, skim along in ground effect, and keep the plane just off the ground until it fully stalls, touching down at the minimum possible speed and energy. tl;dr both planes and helicopters can safely land in case of an engine failure; the main problem is finding a good landing site quickly enough. planes have fewer options but give you more time; helicopters give you less time but have more options. Slavvy posted:Right so if the engine fails, so you can control the speed of the fall but not where you go. you can certainly control where you go laterally, just that you're always going downwards at that inherent glide ratio, whatever it is. you can't adjust your speed to get there (safely) but you can aim to get there early and then spiral/slip/etc to burn off the extra energy. these maneuvers are part of basic pilot training. small aircraft and helicopter control surfaces are all operated with cables and pushrods, yes. no power required. planes, which fly like beautiful birds, are safer than helicopters, which only fly because the earth rejects them Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 21:01 on May 4, 2021 |
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May 4, 2021 20:58
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Slavvy posted:It sounds like the autogyro is the aircraft we need, not the aircraft we want. The flying gn250. A decent analogy imo. My money's on them coming back in drone form after big multirotors have their first major disaster and everyone realises those are a loving horrible idea that only ever gained popularity because they're easy to write autopilot software for.
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May 4, 2021 21:05
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