Words by Robbie Clark When the Swedish government passed a law in 2005 making it mandatory for children under the age of 15 to wear bicycle helmets, many were concerned that the law would be expanded to include adults. Worries about their civil liberties and big government\u2019s encroachment into their private lives were troublesome, but what worried them the most was the thought of becoming a nation forever cursed with flat, lifeless \u201chelmet hair.\u201d<\/p>\n These fears were well-grounded, according to Anna Haupt, cofounder of Sweden-based H\u00f6vding helmets. She says bicycling culture is ingrained in Swedish culture, with nearly 80 percent of the Scandinavian country\u2019s population using bicycles as a mode of transportation, be it commuting to work, riding to school or pedaling into town from the countryside.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd we saw this law as a threat to us,\u201d Haupt said in excellent English during an interview via Skype. \u201cIf the law was also going to include adults in the future, we hated the traditional helmets because they were geeky and destroyed the hair.\u201d<\/p>\n Necessity may be the mother of invention, but vanity is a close cousin, and Haupt and her colleague, Terese Alstin, decided they were going to revolutionize the helmet industry and preserve Sweden\u2019s fondness for bicycle dependence. And spare millions of people from potential bad hair days while they were at it.<\/p>\n As a response to the 2005 helmet law, Haupt and Alstin, while studying industrial design at Lund University in southern Sweden, developed a master\u2019s thesis exploring the idea of an \u201cairbag helmet\u201d that would only deploy in the crucial split seconds following a collision, much like the airbag in an automobile.<\/p>\n \u201cWe needed to employ a lot of people during those years, of course, because we couldn\u2019t do everything ourselves,\u201d Haupt remembered. \u201cWe needed the best mathematicians, because everything that we needed was not invented yet. We needed a new algorithm that was far from the car industry algorithms. We needed an airbag that was three-dimensional, which in most cars the airbag isn\u2019t. And it needed to hold and withstand multiple hits in one single accident, so it needed to withstand full pressure for several seconds, which normal airbags don\u2019t have to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Seven years and thousands of crash tests later, H\u00f6vding was created and certified as a safety product in Sweden, as well as in all of Europe. The company hopes to eventually have the helmet certified in the United States.<\/p>\n The company, which now employs 16 people with an arsenal of varying skills and expertise\u2013engineers, marketers, finances, customer service\u2013in Malm\u00f6, Sweden, has also found distributors and retailers in all of northern Europe, as well as Germany and Austria (and even Asia, with the helmet hitting the streets of Japan in October).<\/p>\n Initially, H\u00f6vding was a hard sell, as is any radical new contraption (let alone with a price tag of nearly 400 euros), and many distributors and retailers were hesitant to face the liability of putting an unfamiliar safety device on the heads of their customers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took us actually a long time to find the retailers and the distributors, because they were more afraid than the actual customers of this completely new invention,\u201d Haupt said. \u201cIs it really going to work? How do I know that it\u2019s going to inflate in an accident? Are people really prepared to pay for this kind of product? It took us a lot of time to convince the retailers that this was the future of helmets.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cH\u00f6vding always raises a lot of questions about [its ability to work]. It\u2019s much safer than traditional helmets in many aspects, and that\u2019s something that is much harder, I think, for us to communicate, because when it comes to safety, it needs more words than just a sentence.\u201d<\/p>\n So here it goes:<\/p>\n The H\u00f6vding helmet is actually worn around the rider\u2019s neck like a thick collar or scarf. A snap button on the front zipper functions as an on\/off switch. There\u2019s a nylon fabric \u201cairbag\u201d tucked snuggly inside the collar, which looks like a big, white, puffy hood when inflated. There are also small electronic sensors which have been programmed with algorithms to recognize the motion a rider\u2019s body makes when the bicycle is hit from behind by a car or slams into a telephone pole or encounters one of the hundreds of other perils cyclists face while cruising down the road. When the sensors are triggered, the airbag quickly inflates and engulfs the head, while not obstructing the user\u2019s vision, for a few seconds before beginning to slowly deflate. The sensors can distinguish the jostling associated with normal cycling and other situations from actual accidents, so if you happen to be wearing an engaged H\u00f6vding while running up a flight stairs, the mechanism won\u2019t deploy.<\/p>\n Haupt says the H\u00f6vding is safer than conventional bicycle helmets because it covers a much larger area of the head, and the airbag pillows the brain for gentler shock absorption.<\/p>\n And since H\u00f6vding was a creature of vanity, it is only natural that the outer layer of the collar can be accessorized with about a half dozen different interchangeable styles.<\/p>\n From its robust media reception to an impressive amount of design and entrepreneurial awards, this innovative helmet drew immediate international attention. And many venerable outlets called moments after the product launch with interest in the new invisible helmet.<\/p>\n \u201cThey started phoning from Canada, Japan, the Discovery Channel,\u201d Haupt said. \u201cThey phoned us from all over the world in just a few hours. It was great.\u201d<\/p>\n However, the greatest accolade the inventors have received has been the sight of cyclists on the road near their office wearing H\u00f6vding helmets barely a year and a half after it was released to the public.<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing it in reality on the streets, of course, was worth all the struggle. It was a great feeling,\u201d she said, not only because it is her creation, but because she feels like she\u2019s helping to preserve her local cycling culture while making her fellow countrymen safer.<\/p>\n And Haupt really does feel like the riders are safer, especially after she put her own H\u00f6vding helmet to the test.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve tried it, yes,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t meant to be tried, but I was in a bicycle accident, and it worked. Of course.\u201d<\/p>\n And afterward, her hair still looked immaculate.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Words by Robbie Clark Photography by Jesse Fox When the Swedish government passed a law in 2005 making it mandatory for children under the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[431],"tags":[160,161,162,62,163,164,165,166,167],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/hovding.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1346"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2256,"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1346\/revisions\/2256"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cakenwhiskey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>Photography by Jesse Fox<\/strong><\/p>\n