Instead of building airbags into plane seats or the bulkhead—that big flat wall at the front of the cabin—AmSafe, the biggest name in the I'm-guessing-not-terribly-crowded commercial jet passenger airbag industry, has hidden them in seat belts: the bag is mounted at shoulder height and connected to a trigger and helium inflation device underneath the seat.

AmSafe's Tom Barth, pictured here holding a comically oversized seat belt that's obviously hiding an airbag or something, told NPR:

The air bag seat belt looks pretty much like a standard seat belt. People don't really notice that it's there.

No need to deny the lumpiness, Tom—I think people will forgive a little bulk if it means they won't splatter their brains all over that darling floral bulkhead carpet next time a landing doesn't go quite as planned.

But alas, the rollout won't be universal. The FAA regulation doesn't require airbags per se, as long as aircraft manufacturers can somehow claim that a 16 G impact is survivable by way of padded seatbacks, open space, or better restraints. Only a handful of commercial jets have exploding seat belts airbags today—none of which have ever deployed, by the way—but the regulation, which only applies to new planes, should make these things a common sight. [NPR]

UPDATE: Now with added video edutainment:
—Thanks, Sergio!

As of now, plane designs that were certified before 1988 are permitted to have seats that can withstand just 9x gravity. And airbags are pretty much only found in cars. But beginning October 27, newly manufactured planes with these old designs will need the incorporate the new seats and airbags in places like first/business class where seats are far apart and exit rows where passengers can simply hit a wall.

So do these standards actually matter, or do they just placate nervous fliers? We'll let this particularly humorous passage from the NYT answer that question:

In some airline crashes, the strength of the seats is irrelevant because the crash is not what the engineers call "survivable." In other crashes, still violent but not as much so as exploding in midair or breaking up in flight, the passengers' survival depends on suffering little or no injury in the first phase of the accident, as when a plane runs off the runway, and then getting out of the plane quickly to avoid a postcrash fire.

Ahh, those witty engineers. [NYT]

The result would be less wear-and-tear on the joints, better ankle support and a ride so smooth that it is almost like true ice skating. I haven't attempted in-line skating since the mid 90's, but I would be willing to strap into some of these if they ever went into production (with a different color scheme of course). [Pouyan Mokhtarani via Tuvie via DVICE]

The two cushions on the hood are supposed to protect the pedestrian's head and waist. There's no saying if and when Toyota will implement them in their vehicles. The system also includes an inbuilt radar and camera for pedestrian detecting, but my personal opinion is that too much "helping-hand" tech turns drivers into lobotomized eejits. If you don't use it, you'll lose it. [FarEastGizmos via Technabob]

[Boinkology]

Only one of these eyes are used to peek up your wife's skirt—the other nineteen are used to locate the position of passengers to deploy airbags more safely and effectively. Tyzx, the Menlo Park company that got an early injection of Paul Allen's seed, is working with Takata Group to speed up the R&D needed to get this to market.

Maybe they should work on adding a few more slanted eyes to make Asian drivers less crappy. Oh yes, I went there. – Jason Chen

The cars have eyes? [SF Gate via Jalopnik]

There is a wire that hooks to the animal or vehicle and pulls a key in the vest when you're thrown. The vests are refillable and quite handsome.

Product Page [MrTrailer]