Inflatable helmet, really

Thinking about the Melbourne bicycle hire scheme and its lack of use,
why not an inflatable helmet? Deflated to fit in your bag, and with a
few breaths, a ready to go head wearable airbag.

BTW, they're going to test a folding helmet made of thin plastic.
Hmm. Can't see that one really doing the business, but anything's
worth a try.

JS

(What was it Edison said? Something about finding 1000 ways not to
make a light bulb?)

On Sep 1, 8:18*pm, James wrote:
Thinking about the Melbourne bicycle hire scheme and its lack of use,
why not an inflatable helmet? *Deflated to fit in your bag, and with a
few breaths, a ready to go head wearable airbag.

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/airbag-helmet.html

- Frank Krygowski

On Sep 1, 7:18*pm, James wrote:
Thinking about the Melbourne bicycle hire scheme and its lack of use,
why not an inflatable helmet? *Deflated to fit in your bag, and with a
few breaths, a ready to go head wearable airbag.

BTW, they're going to test a folding helmet made of thin plastic.
Hmm. *Can't see that one really doing the business, but anything's
worth a try.

JS

(What was it Edison said? *Something about finding 1000 ways not to
make a light bulb?)

They just need to repeal the draconian helmet law.

On Sep 1, 8:18*pm, James wrote:
Thinking about the Melbourne bicycle hire scheme and its lack of use,
why not an inflatable helmet? *Deflated to fit in your bag, and with a
few breaths, a ready to go head wearable airbag.

BTW, they're going to test a folding helmet made of thin plastic.
Hmm. *Can't see that one really doing the business, but anything's
worth a try.

JS

(What was it Edison said? *Something about finding 1000 ways not to
make a light bulb?)

Bell had an inflatable liner to help with fit and retention- worked
good too ( used twice; first time was the 4th ride I had after buying
it- it was destroyed, and the 2nd, a replacement a few years later ).
It's nice being alive

raamman wrote:

Bell had an inflatable liner to help with fit and retention- worked
good too ( used twice; first time was the 4th ride I had after buying
it- it was destroyed, and the 2nd, a replacement a few years later ).
It's nice being alive

A quote from Neal Stephenson's book, _Cryptonomicon_:

--------------------
"Let's set the existence-of-god issue aside for a later volume, and
just stipulate that in some way, self-replicating organisms came into
existence on this planet and immediately began trying to get rid of
each other, either by spamming their environments with rough copies of
themselves, or by more direct means which hardly need to be belabored.
Most of them failed, and their genetic legacy was erased from the
universe forever, but a few found some way to survive and to
propagate. After about three billion years of this sometimes zany,
frequently tedious fugue of carnality and carnage, Godfrey Waterhouse
IV was born, in Murdo, South Dakota, to Blanche, the wife of a
Congregational preacher named Bunyan Waterhouse. Like every other
creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a
stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that
he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less
highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating
gizmo--which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might
justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time.
Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead."
--------------------

It's kind of cute to think that a half pound of packing material (or
in the OP's proposal, a whoopee cushion in the shape of a hat) could
compete with, or add siginficantly to, what Mr. Stephenson is talking
about here. Especially when those responsible for furnishing said
packing material are far more concerned with transient profit than
actual protection.

Chalo

On Sep 2, 8:35*pm, raamman wrote:
On Sep 1, 8:18*pm, James wrote:

Thinking about the Melbourne bicycle hire scheme and its lack of use,
why not an inflatable helmet? *Deflated to fit in your bag, and with a
few breaths, a ready to go head wearable airbag.

(What was it Edison said? *Something about finding 1000 ways not to
make a light bulb?)

More precisely that after his experiments he knew a thousand
*filaments* which did not light up inside a globe.

Bell had an inflatable liner to help with fit and retention- worked
good too ( used twice; first time was the 4th ride I had after buying
it- it was destroyed, and the 2nd, a replacement a few years later ).
It's nice being alive

This is interesting. Was it merely for fit and retention or was there
a safety element too? Was it ventilated? Wasn't it hot?

Congratulations on being alive! More people should consider it; it is
really a very pleasant state of affairs.

Andre Jute
"The brain of an engineer is a delicate instrument which must be
protected against the unevenness of the ground." -- Wifredo-Pelayo
Ricart Medina (who was talking about inordinately thick rubber soles
on his shoes rather than cycling helmets, please note)

On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 17:18:02 -0700 (PDT), James
wrote:

(What was it Edison said? Something about finding 1000 ways not to
make a light bulb?)

There are many positive things to be said about trying everything.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edisonian_approach
Unfortunately, it's not very efficient or quick, but eventually does
get the job done. My personal version is also my URL. "Learn By
Destroying". If you haven't destroyed a bicycle trying to repair or
modify it, you don't understand how it works.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Sep 1, 7:18*pm, James wrote:
Thinking about the Melbourne bicycle hire scheme and its lack of use,
why not an inflatable helmet? *Deflated to fit in your bag, and with a
few breaths, a ready to go head wearable airbag.

At best that would be akin to your standard styrofoam hat without the
plastic/metal shell.

A shoulder-mount grid would be a better idea. To compete with the
inflatable helmet, it could be foldable.

Hi,

On 09/02/2010 02:18 AM, James wrote:
....
why not an inflatable helmet? Deflated to fit in your bag, and with a
....

There's a rumor about a helmet-maker's conference in lovely Austria.
They started arguing right away, who does the better job, until the
conference organizers (some Austrians) were so frustrated that they
bought a couple of melons at the local supermarket and took the helmet
makers to a bridge. They had the melons strapped into a helmet each,
dropped them from the bridge and - for good measure - dropped another
melon which they "strapped" into a wool hat. They went down and checked,
and the only "helmet" that had survived the fall was the wool hat. The
melons were all crushed, anyway.

The morale: Wear a wool hat and be happy... It's more comfortable,
anyway. The wool hat is also foldable ;-)

Ciao..

On Sep 6, 10:09 am, "Bill Sornson" wrote:
"Bernhard Agthe" wrote in message

...

There's a rumor about a helmet-maker's conference in lovely Austria. They
started arguing right away, who does the better job, until the conference
organizers (some Austrians) were so frustrated that they bought a couple
of melons at the local supermarket and took the helmet makers to a bridge.
They had the melons strapped into a helmet each, dropped them from the
bridge and - for good measure - dropped another melon which they
"strapped" into a wool hat. They went down and checked, and the only
"helmet" that had survived the fall was the wool hat. The melons were all
crushed, anyway.

Good thing the AHZs don't allow anecdotes!

The morale: Wear a wool hat and be happy... It's more comfortable, anyway.
The wool hat is also foldable ;-)

So if you were to bang your head against a wall or...I dunno, asphalt
pavement or concrete curb, you'd prefer a wool hat to a hard-plastic-shell
bike helmet?


Bill, I'm not about to perpetuate this topic (promise, I'm already
done for a while at least), but - since you won't see this anyway - i
think the answer to your question does depend on how hard you bang
it. It seems to me that a bump within the absorption parameters of
knit wool would be much better attenuated by that material than by a
hard plastic dome and relatively stiff styrofoam liner that might
transmit more of the energy and even resonate it to your skull.