EcoHelmet recognised with James Dyson Award

A foldable, recyclable bike helmet has been named the international winner of the James Dyson Award 2016.

While bike share programs are becoming increasingly popular around the world, many riders are failing to wear helmets.

This is especially true in the United States, with the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute reporting that more than 800 cyclists were killed on US roads in 2015.

Isis Shiffer, a recent graduate from the Pratt Institute of Design in New York City, set out to address this problem. Her solution is called the EcoHelmet and is a folding, recyclable helmet for bike share users.

The helmet uses a unique honeycomb configuration to protect the head from impact and folds flat when not in use. A biodegradable coating makes it resistant to rain for up to three hours. The lightweight, durable design of the EcoHelmet empowers cyclists to ride safely and confidently.

The cell structure of EcoHelmet distributes any impact evenly around the head as effectively as a traditional polystyrene helmet. Due to the radial nature of the cells, it will protect the user from a blow coming from any direction. The simplicity of the EcoHelmet’s construction, coupled with its inexpensive materials, will keep the manufacturing costs low. Shiffer plans to sell each unit at bike share stations for $5 per helmet.

“I was lucky enough to be studying at Royal College of Art and the Imperial College of London for a semester, and was granted access to Imperial’s crash lab,” said Shiffer.

“They had a European standard helmet crash setup that allowed me to gather enough data on EcoHelmet’s proprietary honeycomb configuration to know it was viable and worth developing.”

International runners-up include the Respia asthma management system that tracks and records the user’s respiratory health and medication use, and the Smart Contact Lens Platform, which is a contact lens with a sensor that can continuously monitor its user’s glucose levels, to help them better manage their diabetes treatment.

The James Dyson Foundation was set up in 2002 to support design engineering education, medical research and local charities in the Wiltshire area of the UK. The James Dyson Award runs in 22 countries. The contest is open to university level students (or recent graduates) studying product design, industrial design and engineering, who ‘design something that solves a problem’. 

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/Momcilo Grujic