[image: Timothy Mulcare]

Having set my sights on an urban bike, I’ve been looking for a helmet to match the vibe.

For those of you who don’t know, an urban bike is heavier than a racing bike and designed for cruising around the city.

So, popping an aerodynamic monstrosity of a bike helmet on your head not only looks silly, but suggests aspirations for the bicycle that it will never achieve.

Plus, there’s no need to offend anyone with butt-padded bike shorts when you take it out for a spin, so the accessory to fashion ratio would be totally off.

Which brings us to Lumos, which offers a range of tricked-out helmets that look as good as they are technologically advanced.

You’ll find these on the Apple Store, but before we delve into that, a word from Esquire about the Lumos Matrix Helmet – the subject of today’s foray into the world of biking.

Of Lumos’s range of smart helmets, the Matrix is the most tricked-out, the most expensive, and the flashiest. As in, the flashiest.

The entire back of the helmet is a panel of lights that react to your directions while you scoot, bike, or board—flashing warning lights to signal that you’re slowing down, pulsing lights to make you generally visible as you ride, illuminating bright arrows pointing to the right or left to signal turning.

You control these turn signals with a remote strapped to your handlebars, or – and here’s where Apple comes in – via your Apple Watch or iPhone (iPhone 12, anyone?), by simply making gestures.

Image: Timothy Mulcare

It also turns your head into a beacon of light so that everyone will see you coming or going, making you less likely to find yourself in a collision.

The light show on the back of your head is also customisable.

Lumos’s customization options allow you to program the 7×11 dot matrix (hence the name Matrix). For those keeping score at home, that’s 77 RGB lights with which to project designs in different colors, all with the goal of making you easily seen in traffic, come pouring rain or bright sunshine. Congrats, you’re a lighting engineer now.

Image: Timothy Mulcare

It looks good, to boot.

Watch it in action:

Not bad at all.

Swing past here if you want to have a gander for yourself.

[source:esquire]