

Bike light that projects the symbol of a bike down onto the road - dabeeeenster
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/embrooke/blaze-bike-light

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jdietrich
This is stupid.

The £50 that this light costs will buy you an _extremely_ bright set of
conventional lights, giving out several hundred lumens rather than 80. These
lights will illuminate a large area of the ground ahead of you, allowing you
to see, and provide dazzlingly bright points of light several feet off the
ground, allowing you to be seen. These lights focus their beam where it is
needed, projecting light directly towards the eyes of motorists, rather than
bouncing it off the ground for no clear reason. Spend a bit more and you can
buy a Magicshine set, which is on a par with motorcycle lighting.

Drivers are not looking at the ground. They're not looking out for weird green
symbols. They're looking for red or white points of light, a few feet off the
ground. Cars and trucks have large blind spots on the nearside of their
vehicle, which a cyclist can best avoid by using their height - a cyclist is
as tall as a large SUV, providing good opportunities to mount your lights
above the doorline of most cars.

If you're worried about drivers turning across your path, your road position
is wrong. You can buy some silly gadget that won't really help the situation,
or you can get some training to give you the confidence to get out of the
gutter.

~~~
jawr
I very much agree with your last statement; if you are undertaking a bus or
other large vehicle you probably shouldn't be cycling at all. Of course there
are exceptions to this.

Although lighting is a very important factor of being safe when cycling on the
road, being aware of traffic and the law of the road is far more beneficial. I
have cycled around London for years, usually with no lights at all and perhaps
it is luck, but I have never had an accident.

You need a strong position in the road and decisive action that allows other
road users to see your intentions - just act as if you were a car.

~~~
dabeeeenster
If you are cycling without lights, I would say you shouldn't be cycling at
all.

~~~
jawr
This is true especially in the autumn/winter. Unfortunately my self confidence
on the road usually get's the best of me.

As much as I hate to say it, maybe there should be some sort of
guidelines/laws to cycling on the road; I know there are plenty of drivers
that would want this and I have seen some awful cyclists on the road who are
not only a danger to themselves, but also to others.

~~~
mootothemax
_maybe there should be some sort of guidelines/laws to cycling on the road_

Such as the highway code?

[https://www.gov.uk/rules-for-
cyclists-59-to-82/overview-59-t...](https://www.gov.uk/rules-for-
cyclists-59-to-82/overview-59-to-71)

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AdamGorman
Already launched similiar product.(this one goes backwards, instead of forward
though) <http://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/bike-lane-light>

Combine for red/green Christmas holiday theme goodness?

~~~
debacle
The product you linked looks much more functional than the one in this
kickstarter. Do you own this?

~~~
ljf
I have one, and it's NOTHING like the image - if it hadn't have been a gift I
would have returned it.

I'll give you that it looks cool and other cyclists see it and like it, but as
soon as a car with bright headlights comes anywhere near you it disappears...
It has no practical use in helping keep cars at bay.

I'd also agree with some comments above that drivers are looking a few feet
up, not at the road.

I find 3 LED lights the best for the rear - one at bottom of seatpost, one on
my back and one on my helmet - can easily be seen from all angles - where as a
single seat mounted can be hidden for a range of reasons.

From the front a Cree T6 from ebay is stupidly bright - keep it aimed at the
road. Great for off roading and city riding.

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dlib
I live in Holland and the dedicated bike paths here make cycling really safe.
So safe that I don't see the use for this bike light here in the Netherlands
although it will probably have a marginal benefit. However, last summer I
rented a bike in London and it was truly terrifying. Never before have I felt
so unsafe in traffic before, anything to improve this situation would be
great. Nonetheless, proper training of drivers so they are more aware of
cyclists and dedicated bike paths would help immensely.

~~~
alexkus
In London we simply don't have space to put in dedicated cycle paths
everywhere. IMHO, they're treating the symptom anyway, the problem is that a
large number of road users in the UK (including quite a few cyclists) are
aggressive, discourteous or just plain bad drivers/riders.

Cycle facilities (cycle lanes - dedicated or not, off road cycle paths,
advanced stop line boxes, etc) all help encourage people to cycle; this is
great as the more people on bikes on the road the safer it is for everyone
(see TFL's "Safety In Numbers" campaigns). But a 2mm high strip of white paint
on the road isn't going to save me from an idiot that is texting whilst
driving and not looking where they're going. Ideally we wouldn't need any on-
road cycling provisions at all.

I've ridden a bike quite a bit in France and have had no problem with the car
drivers there, they give plenty of space when overtaking and have no problems
being temporarily held up behind a cyclist until it is safe to overtake. No
special facilities, just courteous drivers.

Segregation works both ways. This is anecdotal, but on one long distance ride
in the UK there were sections where the riders were overtaken by the support
vehicles of other riders (mainly the european riders). By far the worst (in
terms of least distance given when passing) for overtaking were the cars with
"NL" markings on their european number plates. My guess is that the years of
segregation have put them out of practice with sharing the roads with cycles.
Again, that's just my experience.

FWIW I cycle commute almost daily in London (I took the train today as I've
got a horrible cold) and have grown used to London traffic. The closest times
I've come to an accident were all my own fault. I've read "Roadcraft", I've
had a full driving license (both car and motorcycle) for 15+ years, I did do
cycling proficiency at school, yet I'll still take the opportunity for more
training if it comes up (the local London boroughs to me often provide free
cycle training every so often). I don't undertake vehicles approaching left
turns, or overtake vehicles approaching right turns. I avoid cycling in the
'door zone' and I'm especially careful passing stopped cabs as the doors are
invariably opened by passengers without looking. I'll be assertive but not
aggressive. I smile at the lemming pedestrians that walk a step or two out
into the road before looking. etc.

~~~
gbog
> In London we simply don't have space

That's what they all say. I am sure some said the same in Paris before the
recently build cycle lanes. Cars and other stuff can give more space to other
means of transportation. If needed, just crush some old constructions, it will
give work to those who need it and it will give an axe to grind to those who
need it.

~~~
carlob
Though Paris has surprisingly large avenues for an European city because of
Haussman's renovations.

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PeterisP
I'm not entirely sure how that would help - it projects a bike symbol down to
the ground.

When I'm driving, if such a cyclist would be in my blind spot (behind me, in a
lane to my right), I wouldn't see the projected symbol as well. It would be
simply obscured by my car - I have no way of seeing the asphalt so close to
me; if a pedestrian would be standing on that illuminated spot, I'd see the
person, but not their feet.

That's assuming the suggested 4-6m distance. 10-15m would be different, but
that makes much higher requirements on the power of that light.

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RobAley
Its a shame, for a UK product, they didn't consider that it will be illegal to
use in the UK[1] as your main bike light.

It has a steady mode, and such needs to conform to BS 6102/3, which it won't,
so it means it can't be used as the main light. As an additional light it
doesn't need to be BS 6102/3 stamped, but does need to be white (not green)
and the flashing mode needs to be between 60 and 240 flashes per minute (which
it may do, but doesn't say).

When I'm driving, a green picture of a bike going down a road might distract
me from the actual bike, especially when its projected 4-6m ahead of it as
they plan. In inner-city cycling as a cyclist, you rarely need the light to
see where you're going, more to allow other traffic to see you.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_lighting#Legal_requirem...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_lighting#Legal_requirements)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> and the flashing mode needs to be between 60 and 240 flashes per minute
> (which it may do, but doesn't say).

There's a thing I never understood about bike lights - why people use flashing
lights? They are distracting like hell, and could probably cause some serious
discomfort for people with photosensitive epilepsy.

EDIT:

[http://speakingupanyway.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/flashing-
li...](http://speakingupanyway.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/flashing-lights-
trigger-seizures-so-dont-use-them/)

~~~
jdietrich
Flashing lights are much more visible, for a variety of reasons. The most
obvious is that you can drive the LED much harder and run the light for longer
if it's flashing. Peripheral vision is much more sensitive to flashing lights
than solid lights, because we're evolved to be more sensitive to fast-moving
objects.

Movement is another key reason for flashing lights - motorists have a great
deal of difficulty in accurately judging the speed of cyclists, who are
travelling more slowly than them and at a much broader range of speeds.
Flashing lights make it much easier to judge speed and distance, which is why
the FIA require flashing rear lights to be used on the rear of Formula 1
racing cars in wet weather conditions.

As another commenter stated, bicycle lights flash at the wrong frequency to
trigger photosensitive epilepsy.

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drunken_thor
I like this idea better and I should be getting mine in the mail in the next
month or so [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1652790707/torch-
bicycle...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1652790707/torch-bicycle-
helmet-with-integrated-lights?ref=live)

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chopsueyar
This is not original. This is old...

[http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/01/2255234/bike-
project...](http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/01/2255234/bike-projector-
makes-lane-for-rider)

From 2009:
[http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/Hyperlinks/...](http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/exhibitions/Hyperlinks/GantTee)

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nrcha
Well.. It is a requirement in Germany that all bikes 11 kg or over, are fitted
with dynamo powered lights.

~~~
ygra
This says nothing about any auxiliary lights you choose to mount, though.
Still, I guess this thing would be illegal in Germany simply due to the fact
that lighting on a vehicle is _very_ rigorously specified and I guess the
green colour won't fit well with the laws here.

I guess I'll opt for a very bright (hub) dynamo-powered light instead, but my
main concern currently is not visibility but that I can still see the ground
when there's a car coming at me with blinding lights.

(Side note, anecdotal evidence: No cyclist I know ever had problems with the
police for using battery-powered lights instead of dynamo-powered ones. Most
of the time they're happy when cyclists have light _at all_.)

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mcpie
Imagine this in a country with a lot of bike traffic... 10 ~ 20 flashy green
bikes on the road would decrease safety, not increase it.

