Swedish design students Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin decided to take on the challenge to develop an invisible bike helmet (think deployable air bags in a car) as part of a school project at Lund University (my alma mater!) What started as an exam project soon turned into a venture capital quest with 10 million in funding and 7 years of research (see the video below). The idea behind it is that, unless required by law, most urban cyclists (save for speed cyclists) do not enjoy wearing a bike helmet – it’s bulky, uncomfortable & hard to store when you are not on your bike. Vain or not, most people don’t use a helmet in the city… This helmet design looks like a scarf that you wear around your neck. It only deploys in times of an accident.  A great idea for the casual urban hipster cyclist: it can serve as a fashion accessory & is easy to store in a backpack or a purse.  Downsides? It’s expensive (circa 400 EUR) and you can only wear it once (although on their website they claim that some insurance companies will cover part of the cost of a new helmet if you were involved in an accident).  And well, I don’t entirely agree that this will “save the world” (see video.)  Still, it is good to have bold and confident innovators… Moreover, as someone who rarely wears a helmet on the bike (it is very uncommon in the Netherlands) it could be something to get more people in on the idea; because really you only need it once if you are in a bad accident… And I love scarfs! Interested? Check out the company website (Hövding: The Invisible Bicycle Helmet.) They are headquartered in one of my all-time favourite cities for sustainability and innovation: Malmö, Sweden.  (Photos are also taken from their site.)