Many people are afraid of riding their bicycles on busy roads full of motorized vehicles, and it's easy to understand why. Not only are bikes slower and offer less protection than cars, but they can also be more difficult for drivers to notice. A device invented by a British design student, however, could help level the playing field a little. It's called BLAZE, and it alerts drivers to the presence of a cyclist by projecting a laser image onto the road in front of the bicycle.
"Eighty per cent of cycle accidents occur when bicycles travel straight ahead and a vehicle maneuvers into them," said Emily Brooke, a final-year Product Design student at the University of Brighton. "The most common contributory factor is 'failed to look properly' on the part of a vehicle driver. The evidence shows the bike simply is not seen on city streets."
She designed BLAZE in order to get those cyclists seen. The device mounts on the handlebars of a bicycle (or a motorcycle or scooter), from where it shoots a bright green sharrow (shared lane) symbol onto the road, several feet ahead of the cyclist. That symbol is visible even in daylight, and can be made to flash on and off.
The idea is that motorists, even if they don't see the actual cyclist riding in their blind spot, will notice the image on the road and realize that a cyclist is behind/beside them.
Brooke consulted with road safety experts, Brighton & Hove City Council, the Brighton & Hove Bus Company and driving psychologists when designing BLAZE. The resulting invention has won her a paid-for course at Babson College in Massachusetts, where she will continue to develop the product. She has also been shortlisted for an Enterprise Award, for innovation.
"With BLAZE, you see the bike before the cyclist and I believe this could really make a difference in the key scenarios threatening cyclists' lives on the roads," she stated.
Emily's idea is reminiscent of LightLane, a bicycle-mounted prototype device that uses lasers to project a virtual bicycle lane beside and behind the user's bike. Instead of warning drivers that a cyclist is beside them, however, it's intended more to get drivers to give cyclists enough room on the road.
Source: Bicycle Design
Dutch drivers speed, change lanes at will, hang on your back bumper like leeches, don\'t let you out a junctions and are quite happy to jump out for a bit of road rage and fisticuffs if you cut them up in a car.
What makes them such lambs when it comes to bicycles in the Dutch legal presumption that the cyclist is always in the right. Knowing that if you bash your car into someone who is unicycling naked the wrong way up a one way street at midnight with no lights it will still be your fault because you are in a car makes you a very watchful driver indeed.
It sounds weird, but in practice it works. Modern vehicles are like armoured cars built for racing, whilst cyclists really are unprotected. No car or truck driver is going to get hurt squashing someone on a bike. What the Dutch law does is even things up a bit.
Pity, it looks like a neat idea.
Enter bicycles. They move quite quickly, as quickly as cars in urban areas. BUT they lack the visual volume and the two bright lights far apart in each corner. The car driver has been lulled into the habit of only worrying about such configurations: Big volumes with lights in each corner, conveniently making it easier to judge distance. Bicycles (and partly motorbikes) do not compute in the head of the driver. They are in effect actually invisible to a large number of car drivers. This is NOT an exaggeration. Lots of years and very many kilometres on bikes and in cars have proven this to me, from both sides.
There are some possible ways to remedy the consequences of this lack of attention. - Completely separate bike traffic from car traffic. - Make bikes way more visible. - Make car drivers more attentive. - Build bikes with indestructible cages. Not all of those possibilities are realistic or effective enough. I think bike visibility can have an important effect, but maybe it should be by vividly coloured flags above the bike or so. Higher up than the general traffic. I don\'t know. A bit of light on the tarmac, well, maybe? The point that is actually the right one though is that car drivers generally are not attentive enough, by far. Valid towards more than bikes too.
I think what Doug says above here about the car ALWAYS getting the blame, iif it hits a bicycle (or a pedestrian) no matter how and where it happened, would raise the level of attention significantly! It would remove some of the \"safe feeling\" in a car. The driver might fear pedestrians or bicyclists might want to fake accidents to make money out of it. Well, maybe some will, if they\'re stupid enough, but that will make the inattentive majority of car drivers wake up! Good. Go for it!
By this, I mean more illumination on the person and/or the cycle he/she is peddling or scootering on.
These days, in some countries where 24/24 lighting is a default requirement, the VERY bright but costing much less in power outage is applied through LED lighting mounted inside vehicle headlamps.
I may spot that green beam but would not say that for an illiterate and or ignorant, careless or inconsiderate driver that pretends to feel he/she is the only road user on any road conditions. Thus, a considerable / adequate string of low consumption LED lightning mounted on a cycle, scooter and bike would be a strong noticeably distraction albeit through the side mirrors or rear inside mirror.
If most do notice the flashing lights creeping up from behind by a Police or ambulance... to then cruise aside to let them through, it would work from this same basic principle.