If you ride a motorcycle you’ve probably already heard countless people tell you how dangerous it is, so we won’t add to that pile of negativity. We will, however, suggest that  you upgrade your helmet to this awesome one from Skully. The AR-1 is an augmented reality helmet that not only gives you the protection and comfort of a regular helmet, but adds a ton of features never before seen in a motorcycle helmet.

The futuristic looking helmet comes with full smartphone integration, offering a number of pretty rad features. It has visual and audio GPS navigation so you never have to pull over to look at a map. A 180-degree rear-view mirror lets you safely keep an eye on what’s happening behind you, eliminating the dangerous blind spots of other helmets. The heads-up display is voice activated, so you can control everything from music to text messages with just your voice.

The helmet’s battery life is around nine hours, so unless you’re setting off on a cross-country trip you should be able to use all of its features for the entirety of your ride. While we love the futuristic aesthetic and the many features of Skully’s cool invention, we hope it comes with a warning that it should only be used by experienced riders. For a beginner, all of the added functionality could prove to be too much distraction while on the road.

The post Digital Motorcycle Helmet = Crazy Heads Up Display Features first appeared on Gajitz.

It may sound crass, but the fact is there are several reasons people don’t like wearing bicycle helmets. They make you look ridiculous, first and foremost. They’re also very cumbersome, both while being worn and not. Meanwhile, at the forefront of the hipster, cycling and infinity scarf trends are the Swedes – kismet for inventing an invisible bicycle helmet.

Design students Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin are co-creators of the Hövding. It’s kind of a fitted scarf with a zipper along the throat that secures it in place. When engaged, it releases an airbag in the shape of an old B-movie spacesuit helmet. It has the same life-saving capabilities of a normal bike helmet but only makes you look stupid for a few seconds.

To create such an object was Haupt and Alstin’s daunting final project at university. As motivation, they looked at the idea of the Hovding as “a symbol of ‘the impossible.'” Owning one is now possible, although the $540 price tag may make it difficult.

The post Hidden Helmet Hopes to Halt Your Head from Hurting first appeared on Gajitz.

If you were going to design a bike helmet, cardboard might not be the first material you would think of. But why not? Cardboard arranged in an interlocking honeycomb pattern can be surprisingly strong. So strong, in fact, that it can withstand impacts better than the traditional expanded polystyrene (EPS) bike helmet.

The Kranium was designed by Royal College of Art student Anirudha Surabhi, who got the idea after a scary bike accident of his own. He was inspired by the incredibly resilient skill of the woodpecker which, thanks to a corrugated cartilage structure, can withstand near-constant impact without causing brain damage. Surabhi figured he could use the same concept to protect human brains as well.

Surabhi’s Kranium helmet is waterproof, made of recycled cardboard, and designed to allow for some small degree of flexing in order to absorb impact rather than staying rigid in the case of an accident. It does this while boasting a weight that is about 15 percent less than standard EPS helmet. But most impressive of all is that the Kranium can withstand roughly three times the impact of traditional helmets. The Kranium should be available for purchase in the very near future.

The post Corrugated Cardboard Bike Helmet Is Surprisingly Sturdy, Safe first appeared on Gajitz.

Biking and other sports are inherently kind of dangerous, but with proper safety equipment and an intelligent plan you can mitigate the risks. The ICEdot (“ICE” for In Case of Emergency) is a small sticker that affixes to your helmet, and if you fall or crash it uses your Bluetooth-connected smartphone to alert your emergency contact about the accident. The sensor can tell how severe the fall was and even communicate your coordinates to the person you choose as your emergency contact.

You don’t have to worry about the sticker calling up your mom every time you drop your helmet, however. The sensor works on a time delay, so if you accidentally smash it on the ground when your head isn’t in it you’ll have time to cancel the emergency call. According to the CEO of ICEdot, the simple-looking sticker can help dramatically reduce the number of serious head injuries left ignored or untreated by athletes every year by quantifying exactly how serious an impact was.

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It is an exciting time to live in for fans of Neal Stephenson’s iconic sci-fi novel Snow Crash. The inflatable safety collar described in the book is now a reality, brought to life by two Swedish designers. Hövding is a bicycle helmet that stays out of view until you get into a crash or lose control of your bike, at which point it inflates and pops up to protect your precious noggin.

The helmet was designed by Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin as a thesis project at university. When not deployed, the Hövding looks, at worst, like a slightly-odd but still fashionable collar. The collar’s cover can be removed, washed and switched out for other colors, letting appearance-conscious cyclists match their protective gear to that day’s outfit.

The lack of aesthetically pleasing bike helmets is one of the top reasons cited by people who ride without helmets. Other reasons, like helmets ruining hairstyles and being a pain to carry around everywhere, are also addressed by this rather unusual helmet. According to Haupt and Alstin, their design is meant to protect the heads of those who would ordinarily shun a bicycle helmet altogether.

It may not be as all-around protective as a traditional helmet, but product tests have shown that the Hövding responds well to atypical movement from the cyclist. The sensors that cause the helmet to inflate and pop up over the cyclist’s head are sensitive enough to detect when a rider is falling over the handlebars, but not so sensitive that they’ll cause an embarrassing inflation when bending over or turning around to look over one’s shoulder.

The post Air Bag + Bike Helmet = Strangely Fashionable Head Gear first appeared on Gajitz.