It's partly true, in terms of a bird strike. it's also true for the tether systems that yes you will have delayed protection, because you have to be a certain distance away from the bike before the airbag has gone off. I'll give you an example.
We're on a business park here at Moto Central, and we had a couple come into us last year, male and female on their own bikes. The lady rider had only been riding for 2-3 weeks at the time, and when she pulled out of our business park, for some reason she looked left and forgot to look right, which is the direction she was going. She ended up pulling out on a truck, who to be fair slammed his breaks on and ended up hitting her at a much lower speed than expected. Her husband was sat behind her waiting to pull out also, and seen the whole thing. Now I don't know what has happened to her since, but we took the guys bike in and locked it up overnight in our cafe, and he came back to collect it the next day, whilst his wife was in a coma, there wasn't anything he could do. Now she had broken bones almost everywhere, legs, ribs, collar bone, arms everything - fortunately she was knocked out at point of impact so she probably didn't feel anything (I hope). The only thing that would have helped her, was a built in airbag system, like the Dainese/Alpinestars version. A tether wouldn't have gone off straight away, although it definitely would have been better than nothing, as she did go about 20-30 feet down the road, and the landing would have been cushioned.
My point with all this is, If you have any concern about safety, providing the monetary side of things isn't a hinderance, you should buy the best you can afford, the most reliable motorcycle kit. Sometimes comfort and ease of use isn't everything, we don't know what we need really, until it's needed.
So instead of heresy, how about some actual facts. Helite have a chap who was a Triumph test rider who hit a car at 70 mph and walked away, the emergency services couldn't believe how effective the system was.
