Do You Own a Motorcycle Airbag if You Have to Pay Extra to Inflate It?
"Pardon me while I feed the meter on my critical safety device," quips a Hackaday article (shared by long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo): If you ride a motorcycle, you may have noticed that the cost of airbag vests has dropped. In one case, something very different is going on here. As reported by Motherboard, you can pick up a KLIM Ai-1 for $400 but the airbag built into it will not function until unlocked with an additional purchase, and a big one at that. So do you really own the vest for $400...? The Klim airbag vest has two components that make it work. The vest itself is from Klim and costs $400 and arrives along with the airbag unit. But if you want it to actually detect an accident and inflate, you need load up a smartphone app and activate a small black box made by a different company: In&Motion. That requires your choice of another $400 payment or you can subscribe at $12 a month or $120 a year. If you fail to renew, the vest is essentially worthless. Hackaday notes it raises the question of what it means to own a piece of technology. "Do you own your cable modem or cell phone if you aren't allowed to open it up? Do you own a piece of software that wants to call home periodically and won't let you stop it?"
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