The Invisible Bike Helmet: Hovding
People die trying to look cool. Vanity is the sad reason why people don’t wear bike helmets. So two Swedish women set out to invent the invisible bicycle helmet. On a sign of impact, the hovding helmet inflates into airbag and protects the head of the user.
They've been working on it for eight years, but a revolutionary “invisible” bicycle helmet by Swedish industrial designers Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin is finally gaining traction around the world.
Canvassing participants with the aim of finding the root of resistance to traditional safety helmets, Haupt and Alstin discovered aesthetics plays a major role. While “everyone who buys this product says it's because of the safety reasons” their anonymous questionnaires told a different story.
Airbag technology absorbs the shock from an impact in a much more efficient way than conventional helmets can do.
“That's the biggest advantage that you have, an efficient shock absorbent capacity so that your skull and brain becomes much more protected in an impact … you can have multiple hits in one accident and the Hovding can handle them all because it stays inflated for a few seconds and it protects much larger areas of the head than conventional helmets can do.”
With a price tag of 399 Euros ($577), it's certainly an investment. But while the helmet can't be reused if it has activated, its creators are ensuring that national distributors have enough insurance to provide replacements free of charge.
The Hovding is currently only available throughout Europe and Japan due to differences in safety certification procedures, though the company hopes to apply for certification in Australia and the US once it starts generating more sales.
