DESIGN • Jun 12, 2020
Helmets are badly designed and its not because of their inconvenience
Let me tell you about another highly inconvenient product that we carry around all the time. The Mobile phone. You might think mobile phones are the most convenient product to have ever have made but, hear out my case.
The dictionary defines convenience as “Freedom from discomfort”.
Yes, it frees you from the grueling discomfort of going to someone's place to talk to them or even meet them (via video conferencing), but for argument sake just forget that the mobile phone has these benefits. Think about how inconvenient it is to carry around a super-fragile heavy glass and plastic slab to all the places you will ever visit and keeping it safe for at least a couple of years. But we still somehow manage to do. The common counter-argument is that the mobile phone is more convenient than it is inconvenient and that’s exactly my point.
The helmets are seemingly more inconvenient than it's convenience or benefits. Here the keyword is "seemingly". That’s why people don’t want to use it.
There are just 3 reasons one is buying a helmet now...
1) Not to die
2) Not to get caught by the police
3) To show off
And all the three reasons even combined are neither convincing nor viable enough to make every rider wear a helmet in his own volition. To put it simply, the seeming benefits and convenience of a helmet will not outweigh its inconveniences. Let’s look at this one by one to see why.
Not to die
If “not to die” based marketing campaigns (Naan than Mukesh…) are working then no one would be smoking or drinking. The last time I checked, it wasn’t the case.
Let me illustrate this with me as an example
Every time I take a bus or train or even an airplane, I feel at least a bit nervous and even though I personally know people who had really serious even fatal accidents in a motorcycle, I never felt that nervousness when riding a motorcycle. The worst thing here is that I know that if I am to die in a vehicle accident then I would more likely die in a motorcycle accident than in a Train or a bus accident even when correcting for the amount of time one spends on them. Still, it doesn’t make any difference to my emotional perception of the risk.
I have a hypothesis for this anomaly…The control fallacy
To understand this better, Try this
Go, ask around anyone who rides a motorcycle how would they stack up against all the bike riders.
I can assure you that the more modest people will say that they are above average and the rest will put them in the top 80 percentile. How come everyone in the world is above average?? Math error…
When you are riding a motorcycle you think you are in control of all that’s about to happen because you have the handlebar and the brakes in your hands. Since you are in control (even though apparently you are not) here and you are in the top 80 percentile riders, what bad could happen? Whereas when you are on a train or a bus, you are vulnerable. You have no say in what is about to happen. So, you are nervous.
This is why even the most macabre ways to promote the use of helmets will never work.
Not to get caught by the police
People are savvy, and they know where the police will be and where they won’t be. People would buy a cheap helmet, wear it unstrapped and they would take it out where there would be no police. No conferred benefits to either party involved.
Showing off
The aesthetical benefits will probably be conferred only to those who have expensive bikes, which is a small minority. Above all our Govt has banned the sale of most of those fashionable and sporty helmets.
Whatever one can say, the odds of one having an accident in a particular ride is very low to justify carrying a 1.5 kg object on your neck, which will obstruct your view, reduce ventilation, and even causes hair fall and neck pain (99.99% of the time it is a dormant and redundant impediment). We can do better...
The better way…
Make motorcycles and helmets into an integrated product and make helmets as an actively functioning product instead of one passive product waiting for an accident to happen for it to perform its function. Save one's head.
Helmets that can play music, take calls, and even helmets with HUDs are now available in the market. But since these products are more like niche accessories than mainstream products, not a lot of people get their real benefits- Making you wear the helmet all the time you are riding the bike.
Think of a motorcycle in the near future, which is integrated with the helmets and which necessitates its rider to wear that helmet, not by coercive locking out features (Can’t switch on the motor without wearing the helmet), but by having non-coercive locking in features (which actively incentivizes people to wear the helmets either by information or conveniences). That’s the best way forward. The world is going connected and how long motorcycles are going to be dumb and crude.
This is a bit long short, But for now, simpler helmets can make do and the technology is available for that.
We are neither savages nor communists, we don’t have to force things on people. We can do better. Change by design.
Some smart helmets in the market
https://www.sena.com/motorcycles-powersports/smart-helmet
https://www.argontransform.com/