Left: the undeployed Hövding. Right: the deployed Hövding — kind of a cool hat, no?

Biking around the city is great and everything, but wearing a helmet sucks and always will suck. With that in mind, Swedish industrial designers Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin have come up with an innovative new solution: the Hövding is a simple, unintrusive, unisex collar — almost like a scarf — with a folded airbag tucked inside. When some jerk in a town car ignores the bike lane and crashes into you, built-in sensors in the Hövding recognize the abnormal flailing of your body and instantly deploy the airbag. Here's the Hövding in action:

The Hövding was just introduced this week and so far is only available in Sweden, but global expansion seems imminent. More info and images at hovding.com

[ via Grist.org ]