Alright, picture this: you’ve got to head to work, but gas prices are wicked high, you care about the environment, and maybe you want a bit of a workout, so you hop on your bike and ride your way to work. You get there, maybe a bit out of breath, but you’re feeling good about yourself. You lock up your bike and head into your office or whatever your workplace is, but now you’ve got a helmet hanging around and you don’t know what to do with it! Do you leave it on your desk? No, that takes up too much room. Do you hang it up somewhere? Maybe, if you have lockers or something. You could also just not wear a helmet while riding to work, but that’s dangerous.

Instead of dealing with that hassle, you could invest in the RABA foldable helmet. Well, I should say, you might be able to invest in the RABA folding helmet at some point in the future. With the ability to unfold into a flat piece or fold to 35% of it’s original size, this helmet would be perfect for commutes to work or long distance traveling. It could be easily stuffed into a backpack or placed on top of all your luggage in a suitcase, and it can return to helmet form in less than 10 seconds using a simple fastening wheel.

According to its website, the RABA is just as safe as any other helmet, and its size can easily be adjusted with the same fastening wheel used to form the gear. As of now, the helmet doesn’t appear to actually be for sale, but it seems like South Korean company Nature Mobility does intend to sell it at some point in their near future.

This does seem, in my opinion, to be a pretty cool concept. Its ease definitely has the potential to convince a lot more people to actually wear a helmet. BUT, I am a good bit concerned about its actual safety. The website (which doesn’t include the best English translations) claims RABA prototypes have been tested “about 60 times”. I don’t know about you, but I really feel like safety products should be tested a hell of a lot more than 60 times. Furthermore, the fact that it’s folding could very easily mean that there are significant weak points across the helmet, and the fact that its basically held together by a wire concerns me even more. If more tests were done and I could be assured that it would work as well as any other helmet, then I would probably want to check it out, but, for now, I don’t think I’d want to rely on RABA to keep my head safe.

The website does feature a demonstrative video of the helmet, which can be found here.

Image Credit: RABA-helmet

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