Lifestyle

Someone Invented Airbags to Save the Elderly From Falls

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Tony Maples Photography

 

If airbags can help people survive car wrecks without major injuries, perhaps wearing an airbag can help the elderly when they fall. This was the idea that inspired Dutch engineers, seen in the video uploaded to Facebook from AJ+. They aim to make a set of airbags that will inflate to surround a person’s hips before they hit the ground.

The video discusses how the bags have to be designed differently from car airbags since they would need to be reused many times in order to make the belted safety pack worth wearing. The item also must know the difference between a fall and a sitting motion, or it could go off far too often.

The engineers are testing all of these issues, and they hope that this invention could change lives by preventing major injuries. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, “One of the most serious fall injuries is a broken hip. It is hard to recover from a hip fracture and afterward many people are not able to live on their own. As the U.S. population gets older, the number of hip fractures is likely to go up.” If this invention succeeds, it could be useful for several generations.