Hövding Airbag Bike Helmets: Rise, Fall, and What Comes Next

TL;DR;

• Hövding is an airbag collar for cyclists, invented in Sweden in 2005 and launched commercially in 2011 as an alternative to hard-shell helmets.¹
• Lab tests from independent groups (Folksam, Stanford, and others) consistently found much lower head accelerations and injury risk than many traditional helmets in certain impact scenarios.²
• At the same time, Hövding never fit cleanly into existing helmet standards (like EN 1078), which created legal and regulatory friction in places like Australia and the U.S.³
• In late 2023, Sweden’s consumer agency issued a sales freeze and recall for Hövding 3, citing a manufacturing defect that could prevent deployment. Sales collapsed and Hövding Sverige AB filed for bankruptcy in December 2023.⁴
• In 2025, Austrian airbag specialist iSi Group bought the brand and patents; a new Hövding 4 is being developed for a planned 2026 launch, but no Hövding products are currently on the retail market as of December 2025.⁵

1. Origins: an “invisible helmet” from a design thesis

Hövding started as a masters thesis project by industrial design students Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin at Lund University, Sweden, in 2005. They analysed accelerometer data from real bicycle crashes and compared it to typical riding movements, then asked: could an airbag deploy around a cyclist’s head only when those crash signatures appear?¹

The result was a padded collar that looks like a scarf when inactive. Inside the collar:

• Accelerometers and gyroscopes constantly measure the rider’s motion.
• An algorithm, trained on thousands of recordings of “normal cycling” and simulated crashes, watches for patterns that match a fall or collision.
• If those conditions are met, a gas generator inflates an airbag hood around the head and neck in about 0.1 seconds.⁶

The first commercial Hövding was released in Sweden in November 2011, and rolled out across Europe starting in 2013.¹

Product status:

• The original Hövding 1.0 is long discontinued; surviving units are well past their recommended service life.

2. How the airbag system works

All Hövding generations (1, 2, and 3) followed the same basic architecture:⁶

• Collar form factor worn around the neck, zipped up like a soft, high collar.
• Electronics module with sensors, microcontroller, battery, USB charging, and a mechanical on/off “zip” or dial.
• Inflator similar in principle to automotive airbags, using compressed gas to rapidly fill the airbag.
• Event data recorder that stores ~10 seconds of accelerometer data before deployment to refine the crash algorithm.

Key usage details:

• The rider arms the system by closing a magnetic or mechanical switch (e.g., zipping the collar or turning a dial).
• Once armed, it monitors for angular and linear patterns consistent with falling, being hit, or being thrown from the bike.
• When triggered, the airbag deploys once; after deployment, the unit must be replaced.

Because the airbag covers more of the head (and part of the neck) than a typical helmet, Hövding’s pitch was not just “less visible,” but potentially more protective in certain impacts.⁶

3. Product generations: 1, 2, and 3

3.1 Hövding 1.0 (2011–2015)

The first-generation Hövding airbag launched in 2011:

• Sold primarily in Sweden and other European markets.
• Certified under EU personal protective equipment rules with a CE marking, but not EN 1078 helmet certification (more on that below).¹³
• Early on, a 2012 recall addressed an electronics issue, after which the product remained on sale.¹

By mid–2010s, several thousand users were wearing Hövding 1.0, many in Nordic cities and the Netherlands.

Status: discontinued.

3.2 Hövding 2.0 (2015)

In March 2015, Hövding released version 2.0:⁷

• Lighter weight and improved comfort vs. the first model.
• Refined electronics and a relocated USB port for easier charging.
• Updated crash-detection algorithm based on more real-world incident data.

Independent consumer tests (e.g., from Swedish insurer Folksam) found that Hövding 2.0 performed exceptionally well in both linear and rotational impact tests, often outperforming conventional helmets. In rotational tests, simulated brain strain during oblique impacts was substantially lower with Hövding than with many EPS helmets.²

Status: discontinued; replaced by Hövding 3.0.

3.3 Hövding 3 (2019–2023)

Hövding 3.0 launched in September 2019 as the third generation:⁷

• Universal fit via a dial-based adjustment system instead of fixed sizes.
• Bluetooth connectivity to a smartphone app for firmware updates and battery monitoring.
• Ability to auto-text emergency contacts in the event of a deployment.

Later biomechanical studies that included Hövding 3 found that its inflated airbag substantially increased impact duration and reduced peak accelerations compared to many traditional helmets, again suggesting strong performance in controlled test setups.²

However, Hövding 3 is the model that ultimately became the center of the 2023 recall and bankruptcy (see below).

Status: no longer manufactured or sold; subject to regulatory controversy and bankruptcy proceedings.

4. Safety evidence: lab tests vs. real-world concerns

4.1 Lab performance

Several independent studies evaluated Hövding’s protective performance:

• Stanford University (2016): Drop tests up to 2 meters showed that a Hövding airbag substantially reduced peak linear acceleration compared to traditional helmets; in some configurations, impacts were reduced by up to six-fold in flat-anvil tests.⁷
• Folksam / IRCOBI (2017): Consumer testing found very good results for Hövding 2.0, particularly in rotational tests; simulated brain strain was significantly lower in many scenarios relative to conventional helmets.²
• Biomechanical evaluations (2021–2025): Peer-reviewed work (e.g., Tse et al. 2021; Tan et al. 2025) reported that Hövding’s design offered superior linear and comparable or better rotational energy attenuation compared with EPS helmets under specific oblique impacts.²

The general pattern across these studies: when it deploys correctly in the tested scenario, Hövding can be very good at reducing head accelerations.

4.2 Critiques and limitations

Not everyone was convinced:

• Standards mismatch: Critics noted that most positive studies used flat anvils, while some European standards (EN 1078) require curbstone or hemispherical anvils. Hövding reportedly failed EN 1078’s curbstone-anvil test when evaluated in at least one lab.⁸
• Standard coverage: U.S. regulators and safety advocates pointed out that federal standard 16 CFR 1203 is more demanding than EN 1078 in some respects, and argued that data on complex, real-world impact geometries (e.g., poles, curbs, rails) was incomplete.⁸

In short: Hövding looked excellent in many lab scenarios, but there were open questions about specific impact types and about how to fit it into existing test frameworks.

5. Laws, certification, and why Hövding was “legal” in some places but not others

Hövding’s relationship with helmet laws was always complicated.

• In Europe, Hövding was CE-marked as personal protective equipment, which allowed it to be sold. But it did not hold EN 1078 bicycle helmet certification, because it isn’t an always-inflated shell and can’t be tested in all required conditions in the same way.³⁵
• In Australia, where laws specifically require EN 1078-certified helmets, Hövding submitted evidence to a parliamentary inquiry arguing that this excluded new technologies that may offer higher safety and asked for a broader definition of permitted “bicycle head protection.”³
• In the United States, a 2019 petition asked the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to exempt Hövding from the mandatory bicycle helmet standard (16 CFR 1203) or create a new category for inflatable head protection. CPSC staff and external commenters (including helmet.org) raised concerns about the incomplete test coverage and the practical difficulty of certifying an inflatable system; Hövding never obtained U.S. certification and was not legally sold as a compliant bicycle helmet in states that require CPSC-certified helmets.³⁸

Bottom line:

• Europe: legal to sell, but sometimes in a grey zone relative to mandatory-helmet jurisdictions.
• Australia, U.S.: generally not accepted as a legal substitute where specific helmet standards are written into law.

6. Cracks in the story: non-deployments and investigations

Despite the strong lab results, there were real-world reports of non-deployment in crashes. Swedish media and legal cases documented several incidents where riders suffered head injuries and claimed their Hövding had not inflated.⁴

An investigative TV program in Sweden (Uppdrag granskning) reported on these failures and suggested that Hövding was aware of a manufacturing or design issue related to the activation mechanism, but had not promptly recalled affected units. That coverage helped trigger a regulatory response from the Swedish Consumer Agency (Konsumentverket) in 2023.⁴

For an airbag system that must work the first time or not at all, even a modest failure rate is a serious reputational and regulatory problem.

7. 2023 sales ban, recall, and bankruptcy

The timeline in late 2023 is critical:⁴

• 1 November 2023: The Swedish Consumer Agency imposed a temporary sales freeze on Hövding 3.0 in Sweden, citing safety concerns and potential manufacturing defects that could prevent deployment.
• 15 December 2023: The agency announced a mandatory recall and permanent sales ban for Hövding 3.0 in Sweden.
• 21 December 2023: Hövding Sverige AB filed for bankruptcy.
• 22 December 2023: An administrative court suspended the recall and sales ban, but by then the company’s board considered the brand’s safety reputation irreparably damaged and proceeded with bankruptcy anyway.⁴

Coverage from Bloomberg, helmet.org, and cycling media all point to the same story: regulatory action + bad publicity + product uncertainty = no viable path forward for Hövding as an independent company.⁴⁹

By late December 2023, Hövding Sverige AB was effectively defunct.

8. Aftermath and revival: Hövding under iSi Group

The story didn’t end with bankruptcy.

• In 2024–2025, articles and videos dissected “what went wrong” with Hövding, balancing lab-test successes against legal, regulatory, and reliability issues.³⁹
• In 2025, Austrian airbag supplier iSi Group (known for automotive and industrial gas systems) acquired the Hövding brand and patents. The new entity, iSi Wearable Safety GmbH, is now based in Vienna.⁵
• The new official website states that “Hövding 4” is in development as a completely redesigned airbag for cyclists, using safety standards and processes adapted from the automotive industry. It’s framed as a fresh start rather than a minor update.⁵

According to publicly available information as of late 2025:

• Hövding 1, 2, and 3 are no longer manufactured or sold.
• There is no currently available Hövding airbag helmet on the retail market.
• Hövding 4 is planned for mid-2026, but details (including certification path, target markets, and design changes) are still emerging.⁵

9. Summary of what’s available and what isn’t (as of Dec 2025)

If someone owns an older Hövding today, it’s effectively an orphaned legacy product: its original manufacturer no longer exists, and regulators in at least one key market (Sweden) have formally questioned the safety of Hövding 3. Any future confidence in the technology will depend heavily on how Hövding 4 is designed, tested, and certified under its new ownership.

References