Motorcycle Rider Protection: From a 2010 Exoskeleton to the “HANS and Halo” of Two Wheels in 2026!
#MotoGP #RoadSafety #IndustrialDesign #Innovation #Motorcycles
An open invitation to motorcyclists, riders, manufacturers, federations and universities
I have never really been a MotoGP fan. In 2010, on a lazy Sunday morning, I was watching Moto2 when the young Shoya Tomizawa, aged 19, fell at Misano and was hit by other riders. He did not survive.
I kept asking myself why, in world motorcycle racing, rider protection seemed to evolve on the same old ideas. I also asked what a product designer focused on innovation could explore differently.
In a few weeks, in my spare time, the first sketches were born. The first one is dated 21 October 2010. Then came digital drawings, made on my good old second-hand Wacom tablet.
An experienced engineer at one of the largest riding-gear makers exchanged emails with me as an equal. He recognized the merit of the work, even though his company was following its own priorities. I am grateful for that, and this is how innovation moves forward: experience from inside, and ideas from outside. I believe so much that this concept can make a positive difference, in urban mobility and in motorsport, that I am presenting it again.
Sketch made by the author with CAD, then colored with digital painting, Jan 2012. It shows how the different rigid pieces keep freedom of movement while riding, and lock together to spread the energy of an impact or a fall.
Safety in motorcycling has advanced a lot, as the airbag, mandatory since 2018, shows. But the numbers still show many challenges to overcome. Here is one example: about 16 falls per race weekend in MotoGP in 2025, according to the official report. Up to round 17 of 2026, only one Grand Prix had all full-time riders on the grid. The shoulder remains at the center of this story: champion Marc Márquez in 2025, and Toprak Razgatlıoğlu in 2026. On the road, WHO attributes 21% of traffic deaths to users of motorcycles and other powered two- and three-wheelers, out of 1.19 million deaths per year. This allows us to estimate 250,000 lives lost on two or three wheels. These numbers must move us.
Formula 1 showed, with the HANS and then the Halo, that safety makes leaps when engineering and the will of everyone involved meet. What would be the HANS and the Halo of the motorcycle rider?
My proposal is an exoskeleton of articulated rigid plates that surrounds the whole rider, linking the helmet to the tips of the fingers and toes. It moves with the rider. On impact, the plates lock together. The energy of the impact, or impacts, is spread and partly absorbed by the adjacent plates and conducted around the body. This reduces the peak force on any point. The goal is to reduce the severity of injuries as much as possible, starting with the most serious. It does not replace the airbag, which protects very well at the moment of impact. It complements it.
My 2010 sketches start from the chest and abdomen, the structural core of the set, and the rest of the body comes next. The path also goes beyond the rider: a structure integrated into the motorcycle design, as a rider-motorcycle system, with uses for urban riders and rescue teams.
Why now? Since 2010, almost everything around a project like this has changed enormously. Additive manufacturing makes complex geometries, such as lattice structures and parts made to measure for each rider. Design and impact-simulation software tests hundreds of variations before any physical prototype. Artificial intelligence helps explore shapes and materials, and analyze crash and sensor data. Miniaturized sensors and electronics can detect an impact in an instant. And collaboration tools let engineers, doctors, designers and researchers work together from anywhere in the world. In 2010, I did not even know that some advanced materials could already be flexible and rigid under pressure. What seemed impossible to design then tends today to be feasible, more affordable, more collaborative and more accurate.
I want to be a facilitator. I do not have ready answers. I have many inconvenient questions. When they are faced constructively, they take us out of our comfort zones and lead us to innovations: the ones I propose here, and many others that will appear as the project moves forward. My role is to help specialists give their best, working in harmony, each one amplifying the work of colleagues and institutions. A few of these questions:
- What if body protection was designed as one single load-transmission chain, from the helmet to the toes, and not as separate pieces?
- How much weight and stiffness will a rider accept before losing riding precision?
- How can we detect an impact and stiffen the structure in milliseconds, working together with the airbag?
- What if the motorcycle itself became part of this protection structure?
- Which tests would convince manufacturers, federations and medical teams, on and off the track?
I need partners for the next step: to develop the “suit”, build prototypes, and submit them to laboratory impact tests. I invite equipment and motorcycle manufacturers, sports promoters, federations and universities to evaluate the concept. If you are an engineer and you think I am wrong on any point, I want to hear it. Technical criticism is very welcome.
Write to me by LinkedIn message or at lawrencejorgers@gmail.com.
Did you like this proposal? Do you identify with the search for innovation that raises safety levels on two wheels?
Like, comment and share it in your network. You do not need to be an engineer: rider, motorcyclist, doctor, physiotherapist, designer. All questions, feelings and experiences count. Choose one of the questions above and answer in the comments, and I will read and reply to each one. With this collective effort, this article can reach the decision-makers who can make it all happen.
Thank you for your attention, as always. See you in the next interaction. Until then!
Industrial Design | Arts | Radical Innovation | Future
