Notes from inside an accidental airbag

I lifted my daughter from the bike in our garage, her small hands gripping my shoulders. The January chill stung our cheeks, and my Hövding airbag helmet sat forgotten around my neck.

I gestured toward the house. “Race you to the door!”

She grinned, before hopping onto her kick wheel. She propelled herself forward with the practiced confidence of a toddler who didn’t know fear.

But halfway up the path, I saw it - a small pothole in the asphalt, barely noticeable to adult eyes but a trap to tiny wheels. She rolled forward, oblivious, while my pulse hammered in anticipation. In the span of half a second, I saw two futures: one where she toppled headfirst and another where my reflexes caught her mid-fall.

I didn’t think. I just moved — lurching across the asphalt. My hands extended to grab her shoulders, disarming the inevitable fall.

Then it happened.

A deafening hiss, like a tire exploding. A sharp POP. My Hövding, still around my neck, detonated into action. Instantly, it ballooned upward, encasing my head in a cartoonishly massive pillow.

The helmet wasn’t just inflated; it whirred. Little electronic confirmations buzzed from its connection to my phone, echoing in the still January air. The Hövding app offering alerts of a “potential crash detected” and asking if I was okay.

And then I started laughing. I couldn’t help it. The sheer absurdity of the situation, the way it had all spiraled from a subtle turn of her kick-wheel. This collision of cutting-edge technology and human fallibility resulted in a single, absurd moment.

Her eyes filled with something I could only describe as betrayal. Then came the crying. Instead of gratitude for my heroic save, I was met with wide-eyed terror.

I crouched down trying to explain. But what could I even say? “It was just my helmet” didn’t make sense to a toddler. I managed to carry her home, while she turned away from the sight of this terrifying transformation.

Later, as I stood in the entrance with the Hövding deflated in my hands, I reflected over the scene. They tell you these things are tested for every edge case: precisely calibrated, exhaustively prototyped. A marvel of modern design. And yet… as a designer myself, I knew the truth: you can simulate a million scenarios in the lab, but you can’t account for the chaos of real life - like a father’s instinctive lunge to catch his daughter, nowhere near a bicycle, triggering a $300 false alarm.