I have much to talk about since the riding season has begun. I sold my VIRB Elite and replaced it with as VIRBXE, I took off the beads and sheep skin from my seat and have replaced it with a AirHawk and I just finished reading about a new SOS Emergency system developed by BMW. I am so excited about the seat and the camera that I want to just dive into the descriptions, testing and results but in order to maintain “Blog Order” for retrieving articles I will cover one at a time. Since I am still setting up the camera and performing slight AirHawk adjustments I will simple announce the new SOS System for Nikes.

General Motors was the first system I remember that had their emergency system called OnStar and it combined the emergency features as well as other conveniences features such as getting directions and answering questions about the car. Perhaps Mercedes and BMW had similar systems at the time but I was unaware of them since those cars were not in my budget. Instead I drove a Transport, then a Saturn and finally a Vibe and Malibu during those years. Today almost all manufactures offer a similar system on their high end option choices.

However, I never heard of such a system for motorcycles. Imagine riding off road or taking one of those mysterious country roads that had called your name for years to suddenly experience a mishap or worse you lay your bike down. What do you do? In some (very rare today) instances the cellular phone may not work. But also in some instances you may not be able to reach or use the phone. This is a very good reason that you should never ride in obscure places alone. However, that may change now.

BMW has introduced the Intelligent Emergency Call System or in our language “SOS”. Sensors on the bike are able to detect lean angle, acceleration, and impacts they work together with a built in mobile/GPS system that can automatically make the call to an emergency routing center for immediate help. The system has on the handle bar a flip up cover that unveils an emergency button and built in speakers and microphone. This will provide two major functions:

1. In the case of a rider having an accident, the call center can talk (if possible) to the rider and listen to the scene.
2. If a rider is with someone who has an accident or witnesses an accident they can flip up the cover and push the emergency button and talk to the emergency call center immediately to give directions and an description of the scene.

Unfortunately this system will be available on European models first and may not be in North America until 2017 or 2018.