Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin came up with the far-fetched idea for their Hovding bike helmet for their master’s thesis at the Industrial Design at the University of Lund. Of course it seems like some kind of joke, but given how clunky and uncomfortable bike helmets tend to be, wouldn’t it be nice to believe it’s true? Well, no need for make-believe. Haupt and Alstin put together a team of 17 to develop this ingenious alternative to the hard cycling helmets widely used.

The weblog Jalopnik teases its readers with the following introduction to a video about the product:

Tired of strapping ugly, uncomfortable styrofoam-and-plastic turtle shells to their heads, the pair came up with a pretty revolutionary solution that does manage to give you full head protection without, remarkably, wearing anything on your head.

I’d like to just come out and tell you the secret of how their Hövding helmet works, but this video does such a nice job of building suspense I kind of don’t want to ruin it….Once you see how it works it all makes sense, and is a very clever solution that draws from a number of technologies that are well-established and familiar.

Just in case you’re dying to find out how it works (and don’t have the patience to watch all 3 minutes and 47 seconds of the video), go ahead and click here.

—Posted by Natasha Hakimi

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