The new look for safe cycling

YOU MIGHT be mistaken for an alien from outer space or even a guest of the mad Swedish cook on The Muppet Show,but this strange cocoon which envelopes your head could end up saving your life.

Enter a new invention from Sweden, the Hövding, sounding like one of the unpronounceable Swedish product names Ikea shoppers are familiar with – but this one does not come with self-assembly instructions.

In fact, the Hövding turns out to be an airbag helmet for style-conscious cyclists. The inventors hope that their soon-to-be launched brainchild, which has won praise, awards, raised more than €5 million in venture capital, and attracted interest around the world, will revolutionise biking safety.

Every year, about 30,000 people are injured or die in bike-related traffic accidents in Sweden alone, and many of these accidents would have been a lot less serious if the cyclists were wearing bike helmets. Only 27 per cent of Swedes wear a helmet while cycling, compared with 40 per cent in Ireland (based on European Transport Safety Council research).

A Swedish government survey pinpointed the reason why. Style-conscious Swedes, and especially younger women, forgo the use of protective headgear for the sake of looking cool and avoiding “helmet hair”. Apart from vanity, there was also a practical reason, researchers found. People were often not able to properly fit a warm hat under a bike helmet during sub-zero winter temperatures.

So a pair of enterprising young industrial design students, Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin from Mälmo, decided to look into a unobtrusive alternative to traditional bike helmets for their master’s degree thesis, based on research they had already carried out. From the outset, they were not interested in trying to make a traditional clunky piece of protective head ear more chic, as many others have done.

“Back in 2005, bicycle helmets had just become compulsory for children up to the age of 15 in Sweden and a debate was raging about whether the law should be extended to include adult cyclists too,” explains Alstin.

Closer to home, a bill proposing mandatory cycle helmets has already been passed by the Northern Ireland Assembly amid opposition from cycling groups who have gathered a petition to thwart the new law, fearing it will lead to a dramatic drop in cycling to the cost of the environment and public health.

“Fashion-conscious people like ourselves would not have fancied wearing a ugly hair-flattening polystyrene helmet, so we set about looking at alternatives in case people in Sweden were going to be forced to wear a bike helmet in future,” says Alstin.

“Importantly, our research showed that cyclists were concerned about safety – and especially avoiding head injury and protecting their heads – but many did not want to wear a traditional bike helmet.”

The feedback for the helmet of “tomorrow” focused on head protection that would be “invisible”, or that looked “like something else”.

At its most basic, their Hövding (Swedish for chieftain or head of the clan) is an airbag for your head mounted in a bulky collar, within a cloth shell (black or bright paisley right now with a whole range of fashion options including leather planned) disguised as a stylish scarf.

The collar contains the bag itself, helium to inflate the airbag and sensors which tell the Hövding when to fire. The sensor unit consists of gyroscopes and accelerometers which constantly monitor movement and deploy the bag when the cyclist is in danger, using a device, charged by USB, and switched on by zipping the collar shut around your neck.

Within one second the bag duly explodes when you crash and surrounds your head with an inflated hood.

Describing their design as “almost rocket science”, Alstin said that over six years of exhaustive tests vital intelligence on all manner of falls from bicycles and collisions with vehicles was gathered to teach the sensor the difference between falling from a bike and say bending down suddenly to pick up fallen keys or tie a loose shoe lace.

Dummies were mounted on bicycles, mowed down by powerful cars, while stunt men and women were also used for spectacular falls and somersaults over the handlebars during crash tests.

As to other uses – such as protecting the wearer in a fall from a bar stool for instance – Alstin admits “possibly the bag would spring into action and open under those circumstances” as would “a fall from a bridge”.

The Hövding does not come cheap considering that it can only be used once, retailing at about €300 when launched commercially, at first in a chain of design stores in Scandinavia, next autumn.

The first production batch has been sold out for months. In time the inventors hope that the price can be reduced, but they point out “it is a very high-tech product and expensive to produce”.

“It is cheap if you consider that your life can be saved or a potential brain injury avoided,” says Alstin.

And as it has once-off use only, cyclists who have the precious Hövding around their neck may be more safety conscious – they know a fall or collision will be hard on their pockets too.

Heads Up: Irish top of the helmet wearers

Irish cyclists are top of the league of helmet wearers in the EU, according to European Transport Safety Council research, with 40 per cent of our cyclists risking “helmet hair” and sweaty heads in the interests of safety, followed by Switzerland (38 per cent) and Austria (35 per cent).

Despite its reputation for safety and correctness, Germany came last, with only 11 per cent of cyclists bothering to wear a helmet. The Netherlands, considered the safest cycling country in the world, does not even merit a rating. Hardly any recreational cyclists (and that includes children) wear a helmet. Young schoolchildren are required to know the rules of the road and show competence when cycling along the country’s many thousands of kilometres of separated bike paths.

According to Ireland’s Road Safety Authority, latest available figures between 1997 and 2009 show 51 fatalities without helmet protection compared with five deaths of those who wore a helmet.

In that same period, 176 injuries were recorded in which a cyclist was wearing a helmet. About 837 cyclists who met with accidents and suffered injuries, including serious brain injuries, had no head protection, the figures show.