You’ve just had a crash. You think you hit your head in the process, but how hard? Hard enough to break the helmet? Hard enough to give yourself a concussion or the chance of a TBI(Traumatic Brain Injury)? Those are the questions that the Tozuda Head Impact Sensors aim to answer. There have been impact sensors before them, but Tozuda wanted to come up with an answer that was simple, easy to see, and required zero electronic parts.
The small capsule is completely mechanical and contains a liquid and a red dye. If the helmet and the sensor experience an impact of 85Gs or greater, the sensor will turn red almost instantly and clearly indicate that you should be checked for a head injury. According to Tozuda, at 85Gs, an adult has a 60% likelihood of concussion based on research from Brown University.
Designed to be small and light enough to use on any helmet, the sensors are 15mm x 15mm x 40mm and weigh in at 8g.
Obviously, there are a number of uses beyond cycling – like high impact sports including football and hockey. Essentially, if you wear a helmet, you could stick a sensor to it – though Tozuda only shows the sensors on helmets with a hard plastic ABS shell. Over the years, we’ve heard mixed advice about sticking any kind of device to the outside of a helmet for fear that impacting the helmet at that same point could potentially change the way the helmet would protect your head in the event of a crash (we’ve reached out to Tozuda about this for comment and will report back). It seems that this might be more probable if you put the Tozuda sensor on a super light cycling helmet. Keep that in mind if you decide to pledge for their Kickstarter where sensors start at $20 a piece for their early bird deal. All sensors will be made in Philadelphia, and will ship in September.
