By Andrew Liszewski
The entries for the 2011 James Dyson Award are starting to appear on their website, and one of the more interesting and practical ideas is this folding motorcycle helmet. It was actually developed by an Australian student named Jessica Dunn who spent 5 months riding a motorcycle in Indonesia and decided there needed to be a better way to haul a helmet around when not riding. Of course the most important reason for using a helmet in the first place is to thoroughly protect your noggin in the event of a crash, so the design had to ensure it didn’t compromise safety for convenience.
The Proteus, as the helmet’s currently known, obviously doesn’t fold down to something you can slip in a shirt pocket. But its collapsing design does make it easier to stash inside a backpack, bag, or even locked away in a larger bike’s storage compartment. To keep riders safe the Proteus features an outer polycarbonate resin shell protecting against abrasion and punctures, while a second layer is made from impact-absorbing polystyrene foam. There’s also a third layer that uses another shock-absorbing material that remains pliable until impact when it hardens, providing extra protection. Even the visor sliding mechanism was redesigned to accomodate the folding nature of the Proteus, and if you’re wondering if it will actually pass crash tests, keep in mind the Australian safety standards for motorcycle helmets even helped inform their design and development decisions.