​Documentary about Hövding – The Art of Protecting the Brain

The third generation of Hövding’s unique airbag for urban cyclists was launched in September 2020. It was the biggest move yet for the innovation company. A documentary describes the work behind the product, and the excitement of launching a product after many years of research and development.

“The idea of the film was to document the process for our own purposes, but we are so proud of the result that we have decided to share the film. It tells the story of Hövding’s fantastic corporate culture and everyone who helps save lives at the company,” says Hövding’s CEO, Fredrik Carling.

After more than four years of research to make the world’s safest head protection for cyclists even better, a lot was at stake when it came to the launch. Development of Hövding 3 involved the biggest ever collection of data on cycle movements and accidents for the algorithm in the Hövding. More than 3,000 accidents were staged with stuntmen and data was collected on over 2,000 hours of standard cycling to permit the algorithm to compare accident patterns with standard cycling patterns.

After research and development, there still remains a great deal of work to create a verified, CE-marked product that can be sold and perform optimally on the market. Many tests were performed, in part by RISE (Research Institute of Sweden).

When the film was made, it was not yet known that the Hövding 3 would turn out to have the very best protection level in other tests. These included insurance company Folksam’s big cycle helmet test in 2020. The Hövding demonstrated superior protection against head injury in the test.

The Art of Protecting the Brain was shot and edited by filmmaker Bill Watts and can be viewed in full here https://youtu.be/zKCIIs3sk2M