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news
White cycle helmetHelmet market to grow by over $300 million globally in the next four years
The global bike helmet market is expected to grow by $325 million between 2022 and 2027, with 30 per cent of the rise coming from Europe, and aided by factors such as pro-cycling government initiatives, increase in road cycling accidents, and increasing demand for customised helmets.
A new report by market research company Technavio predicts that the helmet market, on an average, will accelerate on a compound annual rate of 5.9 per cent each year at least for the next four years, resulting in a massive market size increase of $325 million.
The most notable driving factor of this growth, according to Technavio, is the rise in government initiatives promoting cycling, with the European Union having made integrating cycling into its multimodal transport policy a top priority, and even the US encouraging cycling to reduce traffic congestion in its cities.
Another interesting market driver is the increasing demand for customised cycling helmets, particularly by corporate users, associations, and clubs. While already growing in popularity in Europe and Americas, customised products are also becoming popular in places like China and India.
The company studied the market growth of three helmet categories: road, sports, and MTBs, and found that road helmets are likely to occupy almost half the market share, as more and more people use bikes for daily commutes. The report also said the high living standards of those cycling, especially in the UK, France and Italy, drew them to novel products and premium brands’ goods.
However, the report pointed out a concerning trend — that the demand could also be fuelled by the rise in road injuries in recent years.
Recently, a number of helmet brands have tried to raise awareness among all cyclists to wear helmets. During the Brain Awareness Week in March, Endura launched “world's most graphic cycle helmets” featuring CAT scans of cyclists' brain injuries to encourage helmet wearing.
One of the helmets featured the scan of Ian Charlesworth, 62, who was struck by the driver of an HGV in 2019, while another featured John Moroney's, a cyclist injured in a collision with the driver of a 4x4 in Bristol.
Members of Team Jumbo Visma wore unique “brain design” helmets at this weekend’s action-packed monument Paris-Roubaix. The Dutch team, whose member Wout Van Aert finished third after suffering an unfortunate puncture at the cobbled classic’s later stages, collaborated with its Belgian helmet supplier Lazer for this initiative.
> Mathieu van der Poel wins fastest ever Paris-Roubaix after Wout van Aert puncture drama
Endura Project Heid helmets, featuring CAT scans
Lazer "brain-design" helmet, used by Jumbo Visma at Paris Roubaix 2023
Helmet safety is probably a passionately contentious issue for a lot of cyclists, with people being divided on whether helmets are really a necessity for safe cycling.
Although studies from University of New South Wales and Norway's Institute of Transport Economics show helmets can significantly reduce the odds of head injury, experts such as psychologist Dr Ian Walker believes not wearing one can reduce the probability of a collision, with Olympian and active-travel advocate Chris Boardman himself calling the helmet issue a “massive red herring”.
However, another reason for a higher demand for helmets could also be the enforcement of wearing helmets for cyclists. From this month, a new law came into force in Japan that made helmets compulsory for all cyclists, making it the fifth country along with Argentina, Australia, Cyprus and New Zealand to have national mandatory cycle helmet laws applying to all cyclists.
The report from Technavio perhaps comes as a surprise, as we’ve seen the boom in the cycling industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic slow down, with the growth of public interest in cycling resuming back to normal.
> "Drastic slowdown" in demand sees MIPS' net sales slump 46% in final quarter of 2022
Since the end of last year, a number of cycling retailers have suffered a reduction in demand, with Halfords, the UK’s biggest retailer of bicycles, reporting that the domestic cycling market had contracted by 20 per cent over the past year.
The Swedish company MIPS, which is behind the prominent helmet safety system, also suffered a “drastic slowdown” in demand as its net sales slumped by 46 per cent in the final quarter of 2022.
In February, the Bicycle Association observed the sales slowdown since the Covid bike boom in its annual report, with sales of bikes in the UK dropping to the lowest level in two decades.
The new Technavio report, which involved “detailed analyses of the competitive landscape of the market and information about 15 market vendors”, including Halfords, Kask and Mavic, amongst others, said that the rising prices of raw materials could be a challenge to the market growth.
Adwitiya joined road.cc in 2023 as a news writer after graduating with a masters in journalism from Cardiff University. His dissertation focused on active travel, which soon threw him into the deep end of covering everything related to the two-wheeled tool, and now cycling is as big a part of his life as guitars and football. He has previously covered local and national politics for Voice Wales, and also likes to writes about science, tech and the environment, if he can find the time. Living right next to the Taff trail in the Welsh capital, you can find him trying to tackle the brutal climbs in the valleys.
Latest Comments
- Blackthorne 3 sec ago
I disagree, the lucky few who get to wear one of these will certainly produce more mass.
- Hirsute 13 min 34 sec ago
You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off....
- Dnnnnnn 34 min 30 sec ago
That wasn't what my original post was about - it was about the NHS as it is now. If you're going to be run over by an ambulance tomorrow, there are...
- imajez 59 min 18 sec ago
I prefer the not haveing to faff with brakes in first place, which is the typical reality for hydraulic systems.
- Backladder 4 hours 2 min ago
I'm sure the met are merely waiting for it to build up to a critical mass and then they'll swoop in and confiscate and crush them all then there...
- qwerty360 5 hours 54 min ago
Reality - I expect most first year lectures have more than 80 students at them; So 80 bicycle spaces is a rounding error on potential demand....
- whosatthewheel 7 hours 34 min ago
Especially that it is a traffic light controlled junction so he must have been completely blinded not to see the red on his left hand side and a...
- biking59boomer 8 hours 5 min ago
Send the details to UK network rail and Transport for Wales as well!
- KDee 8 hours 53 min ago
So that Pulsium from Lapierre has a 415mm wheelbase? I assume it's on 20 inch wheels then!
- ktache 9 hours 49 min ago
It's been one hell of a ride Cav, thanks for letting us share some of it. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2024/nov/09/mark-cavendish-final-race-...
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31 comments
Imagine if all that money was spent on something useful instead.
pretty small benefit, less than the weekly Brexit divident for the NHS
I have stayed out of this one, because I'm sick of the topic. I wear one all the time on the bike, and when I'm up on a ladder emptying the gutters or installing aerials or cutting bits off trees or rock climbing, and quite often when scrambling- but not when I'm going up and down stairs or in the shower. I'm not unduly concerned about whether others wear helmets, and generally support the Boardman position. I am wholly against the idea that a cyclist not wearing a helmet can be used by 'the defence' to allege 'contributory negligence'. It's not the law, as it is in Oz/ NZ, that cyclists must wear helmets, and neither should it be.
oops. Wrong post.
I think a post like this should be added to every helmet article, and then comments closed.
I don't agree
@wtjs says "I am wholly against the idea that a cyclist not wearing a helmet can be used by 'the defence' to allege 'contributory negligence'."
But it will invariably be used that way as long as there is this unceasing an largely unfounded social pressure to wear helmets. Cue the countless times this social pressure menaces to become a legal one.
Burroughs, like the Beats in general, was a doped up deadbeat and nutter- but there's some sense in those quotes- if true!
Burroughs seemed to have a life of two halves. He stopped using heroin around the age of 45 (I think when he was in prison for accidentally shooting his wife) and began his writing. I'm a fan of his writing as he approaches society as an outsider and he should almost be the patron saint of cynics. Amusingly, when he wrote Naked Lunch, the U.S. postal service couldn't send the book to people due to obscenity laws.
Pedantry alert, he actually carried on using heroin virtually up to his death aged 83, with plenty of cures and relapses. What I always found fascinating was his theory in Junkie that continually coming off and on heroin meant that the junk-addicted cells died off and new ones were generated. I'm sure it has no basis in any known medical fact but when he died he didn't look much more than 60!
Well, he did stop using it, but he also started using it again lots of times.
Isn't that a Mark Twain quote? "Giving up smoking is easy… I've done it hundreds of times".
Tom Waits described Burroughs as "Mark Twain with an edge"
Also from the same source, if I remember correctly, "I have strict rules about controlling my smoking, I never smoke when I'm asleep."
Just for the hell of it also possibly my favourite ever smoking-related quote, when Groucho Marx had a woman on his gameshow who had 14 children: when he questioned her about this she said, "Well, I love my husband," to which Groucho replied, "Well, I love my cigar but I take it out of my mouth once in a while."
Yes, but he was one of those people who was probably born looking not much more than sixty, and just never ever changed...
I like Bono's quote about him after he died a month or so after appearing in the "Last Night on Earth" video: "I thought he might have had another few centuries left in him. He was a great advertisement for doing everything you shouldn’t do."
Here's an early pic of him
Two great scandals within UK cycling.
a) Helmets, Not fit for purpose and overpriced
b) Cycling infrastructure, Not fit for purpose and a waste of public money
Your statements need qualification:
a) Helmets, fit for rated purpose (to provide reasonable head protection in a static / low-speed fall; probably the most common type of crash), may provide some protection in other circumstances, oversold / imagined by many (not manufacturers though) to possess lifesaving powers far beyond that. Or more likely - to be cited to reduce liability / culpability of dangerous drivers, woeful street design or motorist-favouring policy and law... may be considered overpriced
b) Cycling infrastructure, the majority of what the UK has installed and lots it's still building is Not fit for purpose and a waste of public money because it doesn't even meet the current "guidelines" (eg. LTN1/20 - which is itself littered with unsuitable "absolute minimums" given that's what we reach for first) but could be transformative for transport and the environment if we make a network of at least Copenhagen standard (and Ideally more like Dutch). Just like it is in those countries and elsewhere that this has been done seriously.
It seems impossible for some to believe that some people wear a helmet in the full understanding that said helmet will only provide some protection, in line with reality.
Just because I wear a helmet does not mean that I think it will be a force field, magically protecting me against articulated lorries.
You wear one regularly though (I assume) and clearly have thought about the subject. However most people in the UK likely never or almost never wear a helmet, because they are quite unlikely to cycle at all and even less on busy roads. So why should they think about this subject? Received opinion suffices - and received opinion exaggerates the protection offered by cycle helmets. (Or - being fair - it probably isn't really about that - it's just "what you must do").
As you've identified there is a counter-current / reaction to this dismissing the *personal* utility of helmets but - outside of places where cycling is a mainstream activity - it is a niche opinion.
In the UK is what you should do. Just to be totally clear. There is no legal requirement to wear a helmet so the word 'must' is misleading.
So who is it that you think believes that Henry's are far more effective than they actually are? Is it the general public? If so, the 'danger as a barrier to cycling' argument doesn't make sense, because one could simply wear a helmet (as required by highway code) to be incredibly safe.
"Must" - not quoting from the Highway Code - that's "general opinion" (see below); I know it's "should". I'm sure you know that most people also have very little idea of the inside of that tome - was it yourself who pointed out that you don't actually need to see it to get past your tests?
Several streams crossing here - but individually: from personal anecdata and stuff "in the meeja" there does indeed seem to be a belief in helmets by the general public. As I noted before I think this is less to do with reasoned thought about safety and more about "this is the socially correct thing to do if you are going to cycle (because it's not a "normal" activity - and most people don't get about that way)".
The "cycling is dangerous" idea is I think more an expression of "cycling doesn't look or feel safe" - which is mostly coming from a different place - so unaffected by helmet considerations. After all cycling in the UK is statistically a very safe activity and this is sometimes even mentioned mainstream. Yet that doesn't inspire folks to regularly get out on the bikes that many of them own. (The other reasons are of course "but we already have a car" and "there is no convenient route to my destination which feels safe / nowhere convenient to safely park my bike").
Did I say see you all *soon*?
Helmet manufacturers must be salivating like hungry dogs over the potential of cracking the Dutch cycling market. A bit of scaremongering, some political donations, and for Lazer whatever they had to pay the Jumbo team to pair their yellow kits with those fugly clashing pink helmets, could net hundreds of millions of euros in future sales.
Classic marketing used to sell helmets. Make people afraid of something, even if it isn't particularly dangerous, then sell them something that makes them feel safer even if they aren't, and make sure that they can't sue you when it doesn't work by including a disclaimer in the box. Even better, marketing costs are minimal because helmet zealots and governments promote them for you and if you're really lucky, they'll pass a law to guarantee your gravy train forever!
Cheap to make, massive profit margins: what's not to like? Probably as profitable as drugs but none of the risk.
Capitalism at its finest.
In this case the fear is justified, since the injuries are part of government policy, according to the article:
Use the brain injuries of someone hit by an HGV to sell your helmets while fully knowing they're only rated for falling off your bike at 12mph..
You are a miserable Cynic - So am I!
I prefer to call it "experienced". But yes.
.
Best keep a lid on it...
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