You might recognize this artifact from the Wired to Wear exhibit. It’s is a bicycle helmet that isn’t a helmet. Designed by Swedish company, Hovding, who developed the concept of an airbag for cyclists in 2005 after Sweden passed a law requiring those under 15 to wear bicycle helmets. This sparked a public debate on whether this law should extend to adults. Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, industrial design students in Lund, brainstormed to answer the question, would it be possible to design a bicycle helmet that everyone would want to wear?

They set out to make a helmet that wasn’t a helmet, but rather, an airbag that is worn around the neck like a collar. In the event of an accident, the airbag detects the cyclist’s abnormal movement and inflates to protect the cyclist’s head in 0.1 of a second. The accident detection system consists of an algorithm based on artificial intelligence technology that is based on thousands of tests, re-enacting cycling accidents using stunt riders and crash-test dummies, to collect the specific movement patterns of cyclists in accidents. The company also collected non-accident over 2,000 hours of normal biking data. The result was the non-helmet helmet that demonstrates the expression “necessity is the mother of invention”.