This designer made a cardboard bicycle helmet that worked so well that they're looking into making a motorcycle one:

Cardboard Helmet Passes Safety Tests - BikeRadar

 

Neat idea, no doubt it would stand up to the low speed impacts of a bicycle, but no way it would work as well in a motorcycle crash.

 

I honestly wouldn't think it would work in a bicycle crash either, and neither did the approval facility. The article says they tested 50 helmets as compared to the usual 5 to certify it and said it was much stronger than usual helmets.

Bicycles don't exactly go slow... those guys in the Tour de France hit 65mph on the downhills.

The impact absorbing material in motorcycles and bicycles is not much different. Densities and locations, maybe, but general properties are the same...

 

Great idea for a brainbucket, but from the stand point of a former bmx racer, there is no way in hell that I would trust in. I've broken many helmets from Troylee all the way to Fly and O'neal. All DOT approved. I cant trust something like that.

 

They are similar because they have similar missions. Helmets are designed to protect from a 5-6 foot fall from a bike to the pavement. Road speed is irrelevant.

No (practical) helmet could protect a wearer from an impact at high speed into a fixed object.

Hey, I would trust a cardboard helmet just as much as a styrofoam one.

 

That was the point... the cardboard held up to the ECE tests (European DOT equivalent), and it will have the same polymer shell that your Troylee has. And they tested 50 helmets just to be sure there weren't any surprises (when styrofoam ones are tested 5 times).

 

I would feel a thousand times safer with a carbonfiber/kevlar shell. Just because when I would fall it was always side impact head first or full face plant. The Fiberglass shells would just explode and i would find myself in the ER having my face put back together, so when I switched to Carbonfiber it just flexed and absorbed the impact. With that being said, anytime I fell or even dropped a helmet, it was compromised and I bought a new one. One more thing, a vizor will make the difference between a concussion and just a headache. Ha.