Skip to the 1:20 mark to listen.
Men are three times as likely to take up bicycling as exercise or for commuting to work as women and tend to travel four times farther when they do.
This is the pattern in the West (UK, US, Canada) and the main reason for the declining interest in women in cycling tends to be safety.
In response inventors are racing to come up with new safety products including illuminated jackets, smart bicycle bells, and radar systems. In the UK “women-only cycling” lanes are being proposed and in the car industry Honda is testing out a connected cyclist detection system.
The most interesting of these is the Airbag Cycle Helmet by Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin.
The two ladies have spent more than a decade developing a fashionable collar that can detect an accident and rapidly deflate a helmet-shaped airbag to protect you before impact. It even contains a Black Box to record accident data.
It’s an odd thing, but has proven to work.
Meet THE UNSEEN, a group (coven?) of hi-tech female inventors led by materials scientist Lauren Bowker who have partnered with Swarovski on a number of cool fashion inventions.
They have created fabrics that change colour when touched by wind and other stimulants…
And Swarovski hair crystals that change colour to match your brain activity (and thus your emotions).
