With two years under its belt and more than one million rides, bike sharing in Boston is taking off, and one local startup has been tapped by the city to make bike safety as popular as bike sharing.
Breanna Berry, co-founder of HelmetHub, says the lack of helmet availability is one of the biggest problems for urban bike share programs. Berry — along with co-founder and fellow MIT grad Chris Mills — has come up with an automated system to make helmets as available as bikes.
Starting in early September, bike helmet vending machines will be installed next to several high-volume Hubway stations, including at Copley Square. For $2, riders can rent a helmet for 24 hours that has been sanitized and inspected for safety. It's no different than renting a ski helmet, Berry said.
Despite the increase in bike sharing programs in cities such as Chicago and New York, there are no automated helmet rental services in the world, Berry said.
With a swipe of a credit card and a couple of button presses, a helmet drops down, ready for use. After the trip, the helmet is returned to a different compartment, so the used helmets don't mix with the ready-to-use headgear.
"We're an autonomous system," said Berry.
"It'll be the first real automated bike helmet vending machine in the world," said Nicole Freedman, Boston's so-called bike czar who heads the city's Boston Bikes program that includes the Hubway. "What we want to do with HelmetHub is make helmets as convenient as renting the bikes."
The program will launch with four stations, and will expand further in the near future.
"I really hope it not just helps the Boston system but really helps bike share across all cities," Freedman said.
If the Boston launch goes well, HelmetHub will look at expanding to other cities with bike share programs, Berry said.
"We're hoping that Boston is the trailblazer and we're what they're using," she said.
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