BBB Cycling (Netherlands) - The new Kite helmet has recently won an iF award. With its interchangeable visor, the Kite is your go-to choice for both mountain biking and road cycling.

One of the most important accessories when riding a bike, is a proper bike helmet. But which one should you buy and most importantly, which one is the best?

In some cases you are riding both a road bike and a mountainbike. Or you want to use your helmet on your urban commutes as well. In that case, the Kite helmet of BBB Cycling is your go-to choice. This helmet recently won an iF Design Award and is priced at a very competitive price point. So what makes this helmet so great? We asked the developer of helmets at BBB Cycling, Sebastiaan Bowier, to bring us up to speed on the Kite helmet and why he thinks this helmet is the best to buy when you’re riding several bikes.

Safety first:
“When you’re in the market for buying a bike helmet, you’re already doing one thing good: you’re concerned about your safety”, Sebastiaan explains. A long term study of the University College of Dublin proved a couple of years ago that wearing a bike helmet saves lives indeed. In particular, when a collision with a slower moving vehicle takes place, the wearing of a helmet can be vital in saving your life.

“Wearing a helmet during cycling is important, and improving the safety of our helmets is always an important aspect in developing new bike helmets. Before we developed the Kite we worked together with students of the Technical University of Delft to see where we could further improve the safety of a helmet. Two things occurred: creating a thicker shell and lowering the back and side panels of a helmet seemed important”, according to Sebastiaan.

But with the lowering of the side, an instant cyclists problem came up: “With a low side, it’s impossible to wear your glasses anymore. That’s why we lowered the sides a little bit. But most importantly, we made the shell thicker at these points. The back of the helmet wasn’t a problem, so lowering and thickening it wouldn’t influence the comfort of wearing the Kite”, Sebastiaan explains the developing process.




3-in-1:
So safety isn’t an issue on the Kite, that’s for sure. But another striking feature of this helmet is its versatility. This helmet can be used on both a road bike, mountainbike and on an urban bike. “That’s one of the unique things of the Kite. And it all comes down to one feature: the interchangeable visor. But it’s not just that, there are more helmets on the market with an interchangeable visor. The Kite however, has a smart system to do it. With literally one click, the visor can be removed and you get an aerodynamic and well ventilated road helmet.

Installing the visor back on is easily learned and once you know the trick, it’s a no-brainer”, tells Sebastiaan, while demonstrating the feature. The good thing about this visor feature, is that there aren’t any ugly anchor points on the helmet. The complete system is beautifully integrated in the helmet design. Sebastiaan explains how this was possible. “We came up with this system of changing the visor, because we already used anchor points on the inside for the straps.

That’s always necessary in helmets in this price range. Therefore we thought, why not use these anchor points at the outside of the shell to put the visor on and come up with a smart system for removing it.” In the end, that became the unique selling point of the Kite.



Fit:
The Kite is not only a good fit in a figure of speech. It has also literally a good fit. And that’s mostly because it inherits the comfort and fit of his older and more high-end brother in the helmet range of BBB, the Icarus. “We always get back from people wearing the Icarus, that the fit is so good. That’s why we thought, let’s try to incorporate that fit in our new Kite”, Sebastiaan explains. And it worked very well. Sebastiaan shows how the inside of the two helmets are very much the same and how this works out in the fit. It’s a great feature of an already great and versatile helmet. Exactly the reason why the Kite is the perfect helmet to buy. The iF Design Award proves it.

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