Originally Posted by
drlogik
The Garmin Varia radar unit, how well does it recognize cars behind and either to the right or left of you? How about interference such as hills, signs, traffic lights etc? Any false positives, or is it pretty accurate?
I don't really want my bike to start looking like Batman's duty belt but these sound interesting. I also wear a Garmin Fenix 5x watch all the time and as my bike computer and it's compatible with the Varia.
It is pretty flawless in my experience. It picks up any vehicle approaching from behind regardless of its positioning to your left or right. It picks them up very early too, usually well before you hear them so you get a good 10 seconds or more warning before they actually reach you. It can even see up to 3 cars approaching in a line behind you. Signs, traffic lights, hills etc don't seem to be an issue. It only drops out if it loses line of direct sight to the approaching vehicle, like if you are going into a very sharp bend where the approaching car goes out of sight again. But it will pick it up again once it regains line of sight. I can't honestly remember getting any false positives or negatives. It also alerts you more aggressively if something is approaching unusually fast.
It really is one of those rare pieces of tech that exceeds expectations. It would maybe be of less use in an urban setting when cars are passing you literally every few seconds anyway, but out in a rural setting it is utterly brilliant!