Building a Better Bike Helmet Out of Paper

An anonymous reader writes "Inspired by nature, a London man believes the solution to safer bike helmets is to build them out of paper. '"The animal that stood out was the woodpecker. It pecks at about ten times per second and every time it pecks it sustains the same amount of force as us crashing at 50 miles per hour," says Surabhi. "It's the only bird in the world where the skull and the beak are completely disjointed, and there's a soft corrugated cartilage in the middle that absorbs all the impact and stops it from getting a headache." In order to mimic the woodpecker's crumple zone, Anirudha turned to a cheap and easily accessible source — paper. He engineered it into a double-layer of honeycomb that could then be cut and constructed into a functioning helmet. "What you end up with is with tiny little airbags throughout the helmet," he says.'"

Comments

Bike helmet?

[inode_buddha]

Dafuq you need a helmet for on a bicycle? That's like putting a screen door on a cow. When I was a kid the only kids that wore helmets were retards. We didn't have warning labels on everything either, back then.

Re:Bike helmet?

[spike hay]

I should expand on this: Helmets are styrofoam (with holes in it!), and a thin plastic cover. Next time you buy a thing packed in a big box, try breaking the styrofoam. Turns out it's not very strong.

The only way the deceleration (which causes the brain damage) is reduced is if the helmet crushes in. And this will only help in a low speed crash, otherwises your head will still be decelerating after the foam crushes.

I think people tend to assign more of a protective benefit to helmets because of the psychological benefit of something over your head. In reality, brain injuries are caused by de(acceleration) which induces your brain to slosh in your skill, which styrofoam is not so awesome at preventing. It's even worse if it's torsion, which may be exacerbated by helmets.