The "Two Swedish Girls" are two women, who studied Industrial Design at University before moving into product development. If two males in their mid twenties were launching a product no one would refer to them as "boys".

"Hövding started out in 2005 as a master’s thesis by the two founders Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, who, at the time, were studying Industrial Design at the University of Lund."

The title of this post is condescending and clichéd. Yawn.

Oh, give it a rest. The topic of the submission is "Hövding – Airbag for cyclists," and if the title attribute on the linked site says "girls," then who cares. Using 'girls' instead of 'women' is similar to using 'guys' instead of 'men.' Stop feigning offense to feed into your fictional-worldview of social-righteous superiority.

Ah. So nice when science fiction actually happens.

“She lets go of the handle and goes into free fall.

At the same time, she jerks the manual release on her cervical collar and goes into full Michelin Man mode as tiny gas cartridges detonate in several strategic locations around her bod. The biggest one goes off like an M-80 at the nape of her neck, unfurling the coverall's collar into a cylindrical gasbag that shoots straight up and encases her entire head. Other airbags go off around her torso and pelvis, paying lots of attention to that spinal column.”

-- Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

That sounds a lot more similar to the airbag vests used in motorbike racing than the Hovding. Of course, in both the ones that actually exist, activation is automatic and not manual!

Manual activation doesn't imply no automatic activation.

Mirror: http://vimeo.com/43038579

Took me a second to figure out what this actually was. At first it looked like some kind of startup parody video where they're not actually selling a product.

Very cool idea! An airbag makes a lot more sense than a hard incompressible piece of styrofoam. As long as they get the deployment timings right, I see this taking off.

Yeah, I don't understand why they didn't actually show the product until the very end.

There is very little acceleration by the head when the bag senses an eminent collision and deploys as the car hits the rear wheel and the person starts to go back.

I do not think or trust they can design a sensor that would deploy when it needs to without misfiring all the time. And if it fires, you have to buy a whole other one.

> I do not think or trust they can design a sensor that would deploy when it needs to without misfiring all the time. And if it fires, you have to buy a whole other one.

Rather than merely speculating, one could look into it, given that this product is released and thus well studied and reviewed. If anything it seems to lean towards not deploying, as in minor accidents it won't go off.

A decent insurance policy should cover much of the cost of replacement.

Why doesn't it deploy over one's back?

Why doesn't it cover the eyes?

I think for right now, people would be too scared to wear something that could potentially explode and cover their eyes.

If they prove that these systems never accidentally go off, I think they should have a full head version that protects the full face too; or at least cover a much higher percentage of the face, maybe leaving only the eyes uncovered.

400 EUR per single pop...

€399 can get you a really really really nice helmet, like carbon fiber.

And I wouldn't need to worry whether my helmet actually works, and whether I forgot to charge it (their battery only lasts 18 hours).

And I wouldn't need to worry whether their patterns cover every single case when I get hit by a car or hit a curb at some weird angle.

Sadly I've known cyclists to die while wearing helmets. My concern would be in those countries such as Australia and New Zealand, spending an hour explaining that yes, this is a helmet please don't give me a ticket. However I'm sure you could combine it with some kind of slim-shell helmet if you were worried more about cracking your skull than dislocating your neck.

Cyclists will die no matter what. No helmet will save you if you get hit hard enough.

The difference with this airbag is, your airbag is not aware of anything that's flying towards your head, like a truck hitting you on the side. It only inflates after you hit something and start flying.

Its for urban cycling. I've never seen someone being hit as if he was one the highway in a city. Only car breaks, distance is too short, boom, backflip for the cyclist.

"I've never seen" is a bad metric.

I've never seen a deadly car accident, but there are like 30 thousand car accident deaths per year in the US alone.

Do you know your helmet really works? Do you really know your helmet covers all these cases?

Because helmets pass certifications.

Because helmets are always "deployed". I know for a fact that even a shitty helmet is better than no helmet. Let alone a 400 euro helmet.

If you think those statements lead you to the truth, then I strongly recommend reading this site:

http://cyclehelmets.org/

There's a ton of interesting stuff there, but the various analyses of data from Australia, New Zealand, and other countries' passage of compulsory helmet laws shows a very non-intuitive result. Contrary to "common sense", forcing riders to wear helmets does nothing to reduce head injury rates, controlling for other factors.

However, due to the "safety in numbers" effect, Australian riders became much less safe. Ridership dropped dramatically with the introduction of the compulsory helmet laws, which had the effect of increasing per-cyclist injury rates considerably. Thus the well-intentioned legislation did exactly the opposite of its stated aim.

Tests run on behalf of the NHTSA show novelty helmets being useless in a crash. http://www.fairwarning.org/2013/04/booming-sales-of-novelty-...

how do you know that fact?

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