Here's an invention that I think has some merit, but could use some design refinement, as it was clearly invented by an engineer. French industrial engineer Eliès Hamzaoui is safety-minded and wears a helmet when he bikes, but bulky as it is, got tired of carrying it around. He thus invented the OBH (On Board Helmet) system, which consists of a helmet called Unicity…

…which locks to this bulky Jorj unit that bolts to the bike frame:

The reason the Jorj is so big is because it houses an anti-theft alarm. When the alarm is activated, if your bike is jostled—for instance if another cyclist knocks into it while it's locked up in a bike rack—the alarm keeps quiet. But if your bike is subjected to prolonged movements, the alarm assumes the bike is being stolen and sounds off.

The parts that I think could use some refinement are the bulk of the Jorj unit, and the means of unlocking the helmet; annoyingly, it's locked and unlocked via a smartphone app rather than a physical key. This means the thing needs to have Bluetooth guts and battery power, and it's easy to imagine things going wrong.

The other thing I think the system could use is some kind of weather protection for the helmet when it's locked on, or the helmet being designed and mounted in such a way that it sheds water. You've surely biked someplace when it was sunny out, then returned to your bike to find it had started raining, and I think folks won't want to don a wet helmet.

What's strange is that Hamzaoui is targeting bikeshare companies. "Most people using shared bikes and scooters are sensitive and enthusiastic about the idea of wearing a helmet. But too often helmets are not worn because it is too inconvenient to transport," Hamzaoui writes. Targeting bikeshare companies makes sense from a business perspective, as fulfilling a fleet-sized order allows you to accurately calculate production costs and profit, but there's no mention of how the sizing problem will be solved; will bikeshare users have to look for an available bike that has the correct helmet size attached to it?

In any case, here's the demo video. It's in French, but you can understand what's going on even without turning on the English auto-translated subtitles:

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