Airbags save lives on the road, and a Taiwanese inventor who has embedded one in a wristwatch hopes they will do the same in the water. Tseng Tze-kui, a water sports enthusiast for more than three decades, came up with the idea of the inflatable bag in a watch five years ago as a lightweight alternative to lifejackets. Despite drowning statistics, many people avoid wearing lifejackets because they are considered too cumbersome, he said. “We thought about creating a simple, lightweight life-saving gadget and hope to prevent these accidents from happening again in the future,” Tseng said. Tseng's invention is called Fixblessing and retails for about $80 at major fishing and sports accessory stores in Taiwan. The device displays time like a normal watch, and has a small bottle of carbon dioxide attached to the wrist piece which, when triggered, inflates the airbag.
