motorcyclepiece / When motorcycles dump (biker speak for “fall over”) or crash, riders can be pinned under a still-spinning wheel without a way to shut off the bike’s engine

solution / Build a depressible kill switch device on the sides of the bike that will automatically cut the engine on impact with the ground

team / Brian Forde, BMET ’13, Sergei Panasenko, BMET ’12, and Evelio Portillo, BMET ’12

description / “We figured we would start off with a crash knob. A crash knob is something that already exists on most [racing bikes] as an attachment to protect the frame of the bike. So we decided to take that one step further. Instead of just trying to protect the frame, we would also try and protect the rider…. We integrated a button in there so that when the bike falls down—[and it works] only with the force of the bike or greater, so it won’t be pushed by accident—the engine stops, the wheel stops, and the rider doesn’t go through more serious injury once he’s already on the ground.”

relevant courses / Computer Aided Manufacturing, Manufacturing Processes, Strength of Materials, Instrumentation and Measurement, and Mechanical Designred-motorcycle