When cycling, you typically don’t want invisibility to be any part of your ride. However, if you have a high sense of fashion and enjoy the wind flowing through your stylish locks, you will be glad to know there’s an alternative to the traditional bicycle helmet. The Hövding is the design thesis, brought-to-life brain-child of Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin. It’s a collar worn round the neck, fit with motion sensors, microcontrollers and a unique way of wrapping your gourd in the event of an accident.
Hövding protects your skull
The Hövding is a zipped collar constructed of black, waterproof and dirt-resistant fabric. It comes with Shell options to coordinate your outfit or preferred crash situation. When smashing into a wall, being hit by a car or other unexpected trauma-inducing accident, the device’s motion sensors pick up the cyclist’s complex, unexpected movements, sending a signal to a airbag. This hidden head sack deploys from the collar, inflating in a tenth of a second to envelope the head and neck of the cyclist.
The Invisible Bicycle Helmet | Fredrik Gertten
The duo came up with the idea as their joint master thesis in industrial design at LTH, Lund University – Faculty of Engineering, in Sweden. Over the past seven years, they’ve held surveys, collected data, fought off the air of impossibility from the naysayers and taken it upon themselves to redefine the polystyrene sweat collector. Granted you won’t see it on le Tour de France (at least this version), but for casual biking about (or other helmet-prone, recreational activities?) this may be just the ticket to keep your hair and head with your velocipede.
THe Hövding cost 3998 SEK (600.00 USD) at the Hövding Shop. You can see the latest crashes and fashion on the Hövding Facebook page as well.
Hat tip to Chris Howell who passed this along and also wishes he could crash test the Hövding.
