Tatoo bike helmet

At +5 degrees, you'd hardly know it was still winter in Zurich! By Toronto standards, it's positively balmy! The sun is shining, the grass is green... Sure, it still gets depressingly dark by 4pm, and it rains all the time (what we wouldn't give for more snow!), but it pretty much feels like spring. Which has got me thinking about our bikes, currently locked in our teeny tiny, overcrowded storage locker...

The other Swiss Miss has an interesting entry today about a French-designed bike helmet:

The Armadillo inspired Tatoo helmet is a lightweight, low-cost and recyclable helmet by French industrial designer Julien Bergignat. The Tatoo helmet body is made by cutting and piercing a plate of polypropylene with protection elements added by molded EPP (expanded polypropylene).

The key benefit for using this method and materials is seen in the helmet's simplicity, foldability and its ability to lay flat in your bag. It also lowers the cost of shipping. The Tatoo is a great and somewhat attractive concept for a bike helmet.

I wonder if this design will catch on with the Swiss? Probably not, as only super athletes and babies wear bike helmets in Zurich. Seriously: bike helmets are for losers. There was a controversy this summer about mandatory helmet laws, and the country's national biking organization advocated NO on the issue: listen here.

For skiing, however, the story is totally different. The German-speaking part of Switzerland boasts avid helmet-wearers: 72% of German-speaking skiers and snowboarders, versus 46% of French-speaking riders. In this case, helmets are relatively cool, and moves to make helmets mandatory are often countered using this rationale: make it a rule, and it's not cool.

Sometimes Switzerland is so unintentionally self-referential!