Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Bicycle safety - flashing tracker
Here's the concept: A device that FOLLOWS you on your bicycle, and gets the attention of drivers to wake up, bike ahead. This could be a remote-control toy helicopter or a toy car, but if it's a toy car, it needs to flash big enough and obvious enough to get the driver's attention and get it to slow down. It could be wifi, bluetooth, whatever - as long as it follows you far enough behind to a) catch driver's attention and b) give them enough time to react / slow down / take notice that there's a bike ahead. Heck, it could be gps enabled and get fed your exact track to follow, to keep it on the road. If it's a curvy road, it might follow further behind, since you wouldn't be visible around the curve. If it's a straight road, it might follow a bit inside, to prevent people from sideswiping you.
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Alister Macintyre wrote: The device which follows the bicycle needs to be able to either avoid being crunched by the car which follows, or disable the car which follows. This is conceptually similar to with the Royal Train in Britain, which is preceded by the bomb-detecting train ... if trouble ahead on the tracks, the first one protects the Royals.
ReplyDeleteYour idea works for bicyclists who are behaving responsibly, with reflecting clothing, obeying traffic laws. It does nothing for kids who ride around at night with dark clothing, nothing reflecting, no safety helmets, disobey traffic laws, like stop signs.
How about something stronger than ordinary lights on bicycle, stronger than reflectors on the rear ... you want a light shining at about the altitude of a driver of car or truck eyes, that is red behind you, white in front of you, some other color on each side of you. Lights disruptive the closer they get to you, but also within the laws.
Well, the idea is that this thing must protect cyclists who are riding around curves and out of the line of sight. You've given me an additional design option though... Rather than the hovering device actually having the weight of lights, it could have a mylar diffuser which is laser-linked to the sending unit mounted on the bicycle. The bicycle unit sends the laser beam which gets diffused into a bright light. The laser also allows the device to track the bicycle, and the distance can be set on the unit to match conditions (far, if traveling around curves, close if on straight road).
ReplyDeleteThis post seems to have taken on a life of its own on Google Plus - cross posted.
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