An airbag vest for motorcyclists is a great idea for safety. One that stops working if you don’t keep up subscriptions, or if the vest is unable to get an update message, is just a symptom of the tide of dystopian internet of things that is slowly invading people’s lives.
The company Klim manufacturers the Ai-1 Airbag Vest for about $400 . To make it work you need to take out a subscription of $12/month or $120/year. In a promotional video the product manager Jayson Plummer is keen to extol the virtue of it being a product where analogue and digital combine to provide a “superior protection story”.
There should be an award for meaningless jargon in pursuit of shafting the customer.
What is less obvious is that is that if there is a problem with a subscription payment the vest will fail to operate leaving the motorcyclist unprotected. While there is a 30 day grace period after a failed or lapsed payment, the whole process is dependent on the communication technology working perfectly. So no chance of accidental issues then!
When pushed for more information about the consequences of subscription failure by Aaron Gordon, Jayson Plummer confirmed that “then, no, it will not go off.”. So if someone pauses their subscription over winter for example, and forgets to restart it they are vulnerable.
This looks like one of the early players in the service as subscription in the safety market. With motor manufacturers likely to be ooking for ways to get ongoing revenue beyond the initial sale of vehicles, how long before they start eyeing up a similar strategy for in-car systems. Subscription air bags in cars.
Many people have probably scoffed at memes showing a car at the side of the road with captions such as “this is what happens when your credit has run out”. Possibly extreme, but the insidious creep of internet of things into our lives many things become possible. Are we letting a dystopian corporation driven control of our lives slowly take over under the guise of necessity or convenience?