Paper bike helmet wins Dyson Award

A folding, recyclable, rain resistant bicycle helmet made from recycled paper has won the 2016 international James Dyson Award.

The EcoHelmet is made from paper woven into a honeycomb structure that protects the wearer's head from impact from any direction.

It is also covered in a biodegradable coating that makes it water resistant for up to three hours.

Inventor Isis Shiffer said the EcoHelmet was aimed at city bike share users, such as London's 'Boris bikes'. The folding helmet could be sold for $5 (£4) at the cycle stations, she said.

Ms Shiffer beat off competition from a wearable asthma management system and smart contact lenses that can measure glucose levels to win the £30,000 invention award that is open to university level students or recent graduates.

Ms Shiffer, a graduate of the Pratt Institute of Design in New York said."I was lucky enough to be studying at Royal College of Art and the Imperial College of London for a semester, and was granted access to Imperial's crash lab.

"They had a European standard helmet crash set-up that allowed me to gather enough data on EcoHelmet's proprietary honeycomb configuration to know it was viable and worth developing."

According to the Department for Transport, there were more than 3,200 serious injuries to cyclists on the roads in 2015. According to a 2016 study of 64,000 injured cyclists by the University of New South Wales in Australia, wearing a bike helmet can reduce the risk of serious head injury by almost 70%.

James Dyson, inventor and founder of the Dyson company said of this year's winner: "EcoHelmet solves an obvious problem in an incredibly elegant way.

"But its simplicity belies an impressive amount of research and development. I look forward to seeing EcoHelmets used in bike shares across the world."