Although Honda has made several changes to the 2006 Gold Wing tourer, our focus is on the industry’s first airbag system.
According to Honda, this system “can help lessen the severity of injuries caused by frontal collisions”. This will be an option on Gold Wings released in late Spring of 2006 in the United States.
Honda has tremendous experience using airbags in automobiles, of course, and this undoubtedly helped Honda develop the Gold Wing system. Does this point to airbags on a significant number of future motorcycles? We suspect airbags will work their way first into the heavyweight touring category, where the added weight of the airbag system will not significantly impact the overall weight of the machine. Undoubtedly, some of Honda’s competitors in the heavyweight touring category will respond with similar systems in the future.
