Kali Protectives wants to defend your melon using soft tentacles hidden inside your helmet. As a design wonk I'm required to give weird concept helmets their due for pushing the conversation forward, and we've covered more than a few over the years. But as an actual cyclist I'd usually rather pass: disrupting a widespread and heavily engineered technology is only cool when you actually improve it. So far, it looks like Kali nailed it. The safety tech just debuted on their all new "Interceptor" helmet at Eurobike, and the concept is subtle but exciting. 

Photo: Bike Mag

This project was developed to address a central design issue manufacturers and wearers face, while improving on the MIPS concept. Helmets need to survive both high intensity impacts that cause catastrophic damage (and dictate safety standards), as well as the lower intensity crashes riders sustain more often. Protecting against catastrophic accidents requires dense and hard materials, yet head trauma occurs during softer crashes too…and can be exacerbated by that same hard protective shell. 

Photo: Bike Mag

Kali Protectives' solution is to create a "Low Density Layer" a.k.a. cushiony middle barrier between your head and the harder foam frame of the helmet. Their soft tentacle-esque blocks fit around the inside of the form and the suckery parts can flex in any direction, absorbing and dispersing impact before your skull makes contact with the harder foam. If their assessment is accurate, this tech can reduce low-g impact forces by 12 percent and rotational forces by 25 percent. The material of the blocks is still under wraps, but it's fair to assume it compresses a lot more articulately than traditional foam inserts or pads. 

Photo: Pink Bike

Helmet design is tricky because you have to weigh cool racy aesthetics against intimate ergonomics, a wide range of physical conditions, and protection against an array of impact types. And, unlike cars, which have more space to stick in crumple zones and foam and airbags, you have to stay as small and light as possible. Unless these tentacles trap head sweat and reek, or weigh a comparative ton, this solution's well on its way to meeting all those needs. 

Photo: Pink Bike

Kali Protectives has been pushing the envelope on helmet tech from the foam up for awhile (the foam on the Interceptor includes nano tubes), and it can't hurt to have an actual rocket engineer at the helm. In this case, their willingness to break from both industry trends and normal appearance feels like the right kind of design risk first and foremost because it aims to provably reduce risk for riders.