‘Innovative Bicycle Helmet with auto-deploying neck airbag’ wins Bronze at the YD x KeyShot Design Challenge

Armed with two features that make bicycling much safer, Marco Filipic’s Envoy Helmet design for the YD x KeyShot Design Challenge takes on both preventive as well as protective measures to safeguard the rider. To ensure that the rider avoids accidents in the first place, the helmet comes with a fold-out rear-view heads-up mirror that lets them see potential vehicles approaching from the rear, while in the unfortunate event of an accident, the helmet has its own auto-deploying airbag that protects the neck and upper spine when the rider falls.

“Cycling to work every morning gave me time to think about how a helmet could be improved in terms of safety”, said Marco to Yanko Design. “Looking backward and sideways to turn, seemed to me it could be improved with some kind of aid; during a little research I noticed that some rear-view mirrors can be mounted on sunglasses and helmets, so I thought, how might we include it on the helmet and make it easy to use?

“The neck is exposed to falls and is a very sensitive area to impacts”, Marco stated as yet another pitfall with regular helmets. To make the Envoy safer, his redesign sported an airbag concealed in the base of the helmet, that deployed the instant it detected the rider falling. The neck-cushion-shaped airbag would wrap around the back of the neck, providing that extra bit of cushioning to ensure the rider’s neck doesn’t receive any shock while falling.

Unanimously declared the Bronze Winner by the YD x KeyShot Design Challenge Jury Panel, Marco also wins an Apple HomePod Mini along with a KeyShot HD Licence.

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Designer: Marco Filipic