Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
M O R P H E R – folding bicycle helmet
LAST month I attended the British Inventions Show.
The stand-out product was the stand by the entrance.
It took me about one second to sense that this was a good idea.
I met the inventor, Jeff Wolf OBE, who explained his head was saved by a regular helmet ... yet few cyclists trouble to wear them. It set him thinking:
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/morpher-folding-helmet-technology
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Jeff Woolf on
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Hi Clive
I am SO sorry that it's taken me so long to reply to this great post. Since meeting you at the British Invention show I've been running the Indiegogo campaign and living in China so that I can manage the production of Morpher. I've only just returned to the UK (at the end of last week). I m amazed to say that at the time of writing this we've raised $52,000 on Indiegogo which is incredible. I'm getting (and trying to answer) around 200 emails a day. I don't have any support and naturally things are taking me a really long time to get to.
I invented Morpher because of noticing how few Boris Bikers were wearing helmets... and a helmet definitely saved my life when I had a run in with a car and a kerb some years ago. Most of the cyclists we polled said that they didn't wear helmets because they were far too cumbersome to carry around. That's why I came up with the idea of a fold flat helmet.
Helmets are an indispensable piece of bicycle kit in my opinion. When a head hits a kerbstone or a metal post at anything more than walking speed it's going to come of badly. Ever wondered why we sell eggs in egg boxes?
Thanks Clive for bringing attention to this important topic. This forum is very apt because I originally came up with this idea wile working in Enfield, as Business Link's Innovation Specialist Advisor for London.
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Thanks for sharing the terrible story about your brother, Michael. What an horrific tragedy. Sorry for your loss.
I have studied this very carefully over the past couple of years and there is actually very scant evidence that helmets are not beneficial to cyclists. In a huge way. Everyone from the BMA to the WHO call for their use because of the incredible protection that they offer. Just as we wouldn't dream of buying eggs without boxes, we need helmets to protect our heads. The death statistics are harrowing enough but it's when you look behind the "injury" stats the real awful truth emerges. The brain damage frequently caused to cyclists who don't wear helmets is unthinkably appalling. Thousands of families around the world are caring for comatose or brain damaged family members who are too ill to take care of themselves. Many of them are "slow", many can't talk or communicate, some can't feed themselves or even pee without assistance. It is these hidden statistics that concern me the most. Life-changing head injuries simply lumped together in the "injuries" statistic, along with sprained thumbs and grazed knees.
If you think you're too cool to wear a helmet then that's your lookout but please don't believe the con that somehow your safer than cyclists that do wear them.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Jeff, I'm old enough to remember the furious debate there was around making car seat belts compulsory. An infringement of civil liberty, it would make drivers race along the roads as they felt too safe. The fact is that it saved lives.
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Me too "clunk, click, every trip"... No one liked them at first. Now most people hate driving without them and feel really exposed if they're not wearing one.
I imagine it may be that way with cycle helmets one day.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Jeff, you're selling something.
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Permalink Reply by LSquared on
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"frequently"?
How often, out of how may miles cycled, in what conditions, can I expect to suffer a more significant injury than an identical cyclist who is wearing a helmet? If you cannot answer that question with anything other than "well we pack eggs in in boxes and they are a bit head-shaped and I hit my head once" you are doing nothing but pedaling (aha) fear.
I don't believe I am safer without a helmet. I am probably 0.000000001% less safe without a helmet. I do believe I am massively less safe because cyclist "safety" has been conflated with plastic hats instead of overall road user safety.
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Jeff displays an absolutely fundamental misunderstanding of the physics involved when he tries to equate the speed that someone is travelling at with the force that they might hit their head against something.
That's really not very reassuring considering the product he's developing.
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Thanks John, you obviously have a far greater understanding of the physics involved than I do.
Just before I return the awards that Morpher's received, rip up the patents, tell the largest helmet manufacturer in the world (with its 200+ specialist helmet engineers) to cease tool-building, instruct the world's leading in-house helmet testing facility to stop testing and cancel and tear to pieces the licensing agreements that I have with some of the world's major helmet brands, perhaps you'd be good enough to explain why I have an "absolutely fundamental misunderstanding of the physics involved"?
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Sorry, this was supposed to be addressed to Ian B, not John. I tried to edit it but for some reason the edited version hasn't appeared .
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Yesterday's comment was a little harsh, for which I apologise.
However, the point I was trying (and failing) to make was that it's perfectly possible to suffer a fatal head injury while falling from a standstill (for example the recent tragic case of the person dying after being knocked to the ground in a supermarket car park argument), and being on a moving bike doesn't necessarily mean the force with which a head hits the ground will be any more severe. Horizontal and vertical components of velocity being independent, and all that.
I find it interesting that the pitch for the funding focused strongly on hire bikes, because the stats suggest that they're actually very low risk. Since the London scheme started there has been one fatality amongst over 26 million journeys. The injuries suffered by the victim meant wearing a helmet (I have no idea whether she was or wasn't) would have been completely insignificant. As far as I'm aware the number of serious head injuries is also incredibly low. If this is the case, why is it so shocking that people are using hire bikes without helmets?
I find *any* promotion of helmet use overwhelmingly negative in that it portrays cycling as more dangerous than it really is, and diverts attention away from what poses real threats to cyclists. Note that after the period last month when several cyclists were killed in little over a week, the reaction was to put police on the streets and tell cyclists they should wear helmets. This despite no evidence that helmets could have saved any of the victims, and plenty of evidence that they would have made no difference to the outcome.
I find it all rather baffling.
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Last year I slipped on a banana skin (something I thought only happened in silent movies) in Pemberton Road, fell and banged my head on the pavement and survived. However, it I have fallen from the top of a house on Pemberton Road, my velocity would have significantly increased and my chances of survival would have been signficantly lower. Can't understand where the physics is wrong in this?
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