People's airbag 'prevents injury'

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File under: Wacky Japanese inventions.
Notes: Needs work ("does not protect those who fall forward." )

Quote:

People's airbag 'prevents injury'

BBC News
24 September 2008

A Japanese company says it has made an airbag designed to stop elderly people injuring themselves by falling over.

The device is strapped around the body and inflates in 0.1 seconds if it detects it is accelerating towards the ground, the manufacturers say.

[ORIGINAL STORY HAS VIDEO - Nimh]

The Tokyo-based company, Prop, says the product is designed to cushion a fall using two separate pockets of air.

One pocket will be behind the head and the other around the hips. It does not protect those who fall forward.

The airbag has been unveiled at the International Home Care and Rehabilitation Exhibition in Tokyo.

The president of Prop, Mitsuya Uchida, says it is aimed especially at old people with epilepsy, who are very vulnerable to injury.

Japan has a large elderly population with nearly 30 million people over the age of 65. There is a huge market for products to protect and assist them.

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[+3] - Robert Gentel - 09/30/2008Only in Japan! When I was a kid, I loved Japanese gadgets. I had an electric eraser in Japan. It wasn't too useful for erasing (it'd eat through the paper in seconds) but it was very useful for...

@nimh,

Only in Japan!

When I was a kid, I loved Japanese gadgets. I had an electric eraser in Japan. It wasn't too useful for erasing (it'd eat through the paper in seconds) but it was very useful for making knots in my friends' hair (they wanted them, they all thought my knotted hair was wicked cool). So useful, in fact, that the mother of one boy had to cut her kid's hair and I earned a spanking and the loss of my toy.

I still want it back. Evil or Very Mad

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Heh

This was definitely a more mellow human interest story to post than the German dentist one Shocked

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@nimh,

nimh wrote:

the German dentist

That sounds like the opening line of something posted on the bad jokes thread....

1 Reply

@DrewDad,

DrewDad wrote:

That sounds like the opening line of something posted on the bad jokes thread....

Bad joke is right:

Last night in your nightmare, today in the news: German dentist extracts payment from patient

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People's airbag 'prevents injury'

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