Recent figures show that cycling sends more than 500,000 Americans to the emergency room each year, and around 85,000 report head injuries. Hard knocks on the head are especially dangerous as they can cause skull fractures, concussions, and other brain damage, often permanently. Right now, cyclists overwhelmingly prefer today's plastic-covered, polystyrene-foam helmets because they are light in weight, ventilated and fairly cheap. However many people ride hired or shared bikes and they have no helmet at all.

However a paper product wouldn't be many people's first thought when they were looking for a new type of bike helmet. But a design based on exactly that idea, has just won James Dyson's international inventors' competition. Industrial designer Isis Shiffer was traveling overseas and using the bike sharing systems available in many countries. It was then that she got the idea that would eventually become her disposable, paper helmets.

"I was abroad in London, and Tokyo, and other places, and there were never any helmets available, and I was really anxious because I was riding on the wrong side of the road, and I was absolutely convinced that I was gonna get flattened. So, I thought that there really needed to be something there for cyclists like myself," Shiffer said.

Shiffer's paper creations, which she has named Eco Helmets, are made of waterproof paper folded into a honeycomb pattern, which is good at absorbing shocks and impacts. She foresees the time when they will be sold in vending machines or even at businesses such as coffee shops and railway stations. Ms Shiffer is now working toward getting certification from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

With the prize money of 30,000 pounds, she is going to develop her design further and develop her own consultancy business.