Motorcycle helmets are expensive, or at least that is the case with good ones, but they do not integrate any kind of “smart” technology. Some companies have attempted to change that through various products, but most have not managed to reach their announced goal. There are several issues here, but the essential ones are being put on the table in the video below.
Perhaps the most famous smart helmet of them all, Skully, managed to capture the imagination of many riders, and this led to numerous people paying money upfront for one, as well as investors who funded the company from the start. Well, as it turns out, making a helmet is expensive and complicated. This is taken to another level if the company has never made a helmet and, moreover, is a start-up.
Other systems available attempt to bring smart features to most helmets, but they come with certain advantages for each and a set of disadvantages. As Ryan from FortNine points out, smart helmets have a future. Still, we just need to figure out what people are willing to hang on their heads and what they want to be improved with current technology.
As you may have noticed, most modern motorcycles that go past a certain price point, if not all above a certain price, have a fully digital dashboard. The latter can integrate smartphone connectivity, including Apple CarPlay, which makes the need for a HUD in a helmet almost obsolete.
Sure, you might use the HUD on an older motorcycle, but it still needs to work great for that to happen, which is not the case when looking at it in direct sunlight. Or in various lighting conditions that are found in real life.
Instead, implementing a camera to film what the rider is seeing sounds like a great idea when done right and with the right kind of stabilization, which is tricky on a motorcycle because of vibration, not to mention because a human wears it. So, is a helmet camera a smart device?
Well, that is another issue, so let us leave Ryan to explain why some, if not most, “smart” motorcycle helmets are “catastrophically stupid” (his words, not ours, esteemed lawyers), as well as a "scam."
Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland. Full profile
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