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I have been jealous of our British readers for sometime now, as the government in the UK has seen it fit not only to have one of the best helmet safety rating systems known to man, but they have made their test results incredibly accessible to the two-wheeled going public. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s worth taking a look at Britain’s SHARP website before buying your next lid.

SHARP takes impact analysis from five regions of the helmet, and then based on analysis from which points on the helmet are statistically more likely to be hit during a crash, assigns a weighted score to the helmet’s safety score.

Basing laboratory analysis with real world probabilities, SHARP  is perhaps the most pragmatic rating system available for motorcyclists, but more importantly it is the most transparent and accessible.

Well know it looks like we can be jealous of Australia as well, as our riding brothers and sisters down under have their own public database of helmet crash statistics, appropriately called CRASH, which like its British counterpart, does away with some of the guess work in helmet safety, and makes that data available to consumers.

MIT Professor Dava Newman wants to build better astronaut suits. The modern spacesuit, while highly protective and functional, presents unique problems with regards to the pressures exerted on the human body.

Prof. Newman’s research, with the help of the Dainese Technology Center and with the backing of NASA, aims to highlight specific problem areas for redesign the body and suit interface.

With the resources available at D-Tec in Italy, MIT engineer Allison Anderosn along with Dainese engineers have created a suit undergarment that utilizes sensors to detect pressure points (impact and abrasion).

The results of the study will be made available to other space agencies, with the Russian space agency being among the first to benefit.

While trolling through the doldrums of social media, I stumbled across this advertisement from the New Zealand Transport Agency about speeding, and posted it to the A&R Facebook page. The message is typical, but the execution is masterful, and so I thought it prudent to post it here as well.

You would be hard-pressed to find a motorist who doesn’t travel a comfortable margin above the speed limit at times, and while we consider that offense a casual breaking of the law, this video reminds us that the consequences are potentially less casual. So the next time you’re doing a couple clicks over the posted MPH, give this ad a thought.

You may remember the well-done short film that Yamaha Racing put together recently about Kazutoshi Seki, the man behind the electronics of Valentino Rossi’s MotoGP race bike, and how great of a job Yamaha did in portraying someone in the MotoGP paddock that you likely have never heard of, but whose contributions are so vital to what happens on the race track every weekend.

Well today we bring you an earlier installment of Yamaha’s “Moving You” series, from which that video came from, and which instead focuses on the Yamaha Riding Academy (YRA) and its Chief Instructor Hidenobu “Concorde” Toh.

A film about the work that Yamaha does beyond just selling motorcycles, it highlights the fact that YRA primarily deals with police forces around the world, and that Toh-san is responsible for teaching the motorcycle officers both basic and advanced riding techniques, which will serve them in the line of duty, and could make the difference between life and death.

As the video explains, this is a high-stakes training effort, as many of the countries involved use officers on motorcycles for their most dangerous assignments. In that regard, Toh-san and his instructors are tasked with giving these officers the tools they need to not only perform their jobs, but to also come home safe from assignment.

Like its MotoGP counterpart, it is well-told story that focuses on the work of one individual, and how that person contributes to a larger effort. It also happens to be a great eleven-minute distraction from your weekend, which we think you will enjoy.

The lack of tire testing prior to the Phillip Island round has caught both control tire companies out. As such, Race Direction has decided to shorten the Moto2 race from 25 to just 13 laps, while the MotoGP race will now include a compulsory pit stop to swap bikes, and the race length has been cut by one lap from 27 to 26 laps.

In addition, the MotoGP riders are prohibited from using the softer option rear tire, and will be forced to use the harder option. Both decisions were taken on safety grounds, after it was found that neither the Moto2-spec Dunlop nor the MotoGP-spec Bridgestone can handle race distance on the newly-resurfaced tarmac.

The lighter, less powerful Moto3 bike are not affected, and the Moto3 race will run the scheduled length.

What do you do when the medical response times during peak traffic hours can be upwards of 30 minutes? How about when the established healthcare has no interest in bridging the gap of time it takes between when an incident occurs to and proper medical attention arrives?

After the Second Lebanon War, Eli Beer pondered the same questions while living in Israel, and subsequently started United Hatzlah — a motorcycle-based group of emergency first-responders. Doing a TED Talk at TEDMED 2013, Beer speaks about the advantages of two-wheeled first-responders, and the strides his organization has made in bringing stabilizing treatments to injured persons.

The paramedics-on-motorbikes model isn’t unique, and can be found in many European metropolitans, though it is a bit of rarity here in the United States. With United Hatzlah averaging a sub-three minute response time, (the group aims for a 90 second response window), we think TED’s tagline is appropriate: this is an idea worth sharing.

July isn’t getting off to a great start for electric motorcycle manufacturer Brammo Inc, as the Ashland, Oregon company suffered a fire in the company’s R&D lab during the start of the month. The fire broke-out over the weekend of June 30th, as the EV company was doing extended testing to a lithium-ion battery pack.

Fortunately, Brammo’s automated sprinkler system was able to put out the blaze caused by the malfunctioning battery pack, but in the process caused roughly $200,000 in water-damage to equipment located in the facility.

Continental has begun a voluntary recall for its ContiMotion line of sport-touring tires. Affecting 1,700 units in the market, Continental says the tires in question are sized at 180/60R16 and under certain conditions these tires may have uneven wear, groove cracking, and in some cases even belt lift.

It goes without saying that these circumstances would leave the tires unsafe for use, though Continental has not received any reports about accidents resulting from these conditions. Most affected by the situation are Honda Gold Wing 1800 owners, especially in cases where there has been over-loading and under-inflating of the tire.

Here at Asphalt & Rubber, we spend some pixels talking about the finer points of helmet usage, especially when it comes to the debate regarding mandatory helmet laws. Looking at helmets from 50 years ago, and the basic concept hasn’t changed all that much in the time since.

A hard shell, some impact material, and a soft lining mated to a visor and chin-strap system, over the last half-century most of the improvements to the basic helmet design have been for added fit and comfort, or cheaper and lighter materials — even the more creative and innovative designs that are being hocked around the internet right now don’t stray far from the current concept.

Think 50 years ahead though, and it is hard to imagine the same shapes and designs staying constant. In fact, it becomes possible to imagine motorcyclists wearing no helmets at all. No, I am not talking about some sort of libertarian movement that will rush through our political system, freeing us from the shackles of big government.

Instead, I am talking about the true next-generation of safety devices for the gray matter that resides between your ears, which might put the mandatory helmet law debate to rest (well…probably not).

The Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA) has issued a press release that praises the Government Accountability Office (GAO) for its call to Congress for changes in motorcycle safety.

The GAO’s recommendation basically breaks down into two points: 1) Congress should give states more flexibility in the way they use funds that have been earmarked to tackle motorcycle safety, and 2) that the NHTSA should provide states with more comprehensive information about motorcycle crashes and injuries.

The second point is perhaps the most important, as it has become painfully obvious that the government, both at the state and federal level, has little concrete information about the causes of motorcycle crashes and injuries.

While we are still using information collected almost 40-years-ago from the Hurt Report, the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) has contended that the motorcycle landscape has changed so significantly in that timeframe that the Hurt Report was conducted that it no longer accurately quantifies the dangers and conditions present for motorcyclists.