BobbyG

Agreed. And I'm not always (or usually) clear.

rsbob 

In that case, your Location Services on your mobile phone is turned for all apps, etc to OFF. Even so, you location can be determined by triangulation by any official entity determined to find your phone.

If you don’t own a mobile phone, then you don’t have to worry about being tracked. Period. But if you have On-Star or a similar product in your vehicle, you can still be tracked. Ah life can be so complicated these days.

PeteHski

I don’t care whether or not I’m tracked on my bike. I upload my own rides to Strava anyway.

livedarklions

Do take a look at the website for this particular app or whatever you call it. There's a picture of a very busy-looking screen on the steering wheel of a car and a list of all the outside devices and infrastructure contributing to that display. I'm thinking this might be heading in the direction of information overload and distraction.

livedarklions

Again, I think the comparison to TCAS is fatally flawed. First, if you put such a device on a car, it's going to encounter more close passes in a single city block than might be encountered by a pilot in months of flying. Also, TCAS is necessitated in part by differences in altitude and huge differences in speeds creating problems with visualization. You just have more blind spots flying than you have driving.

I'm not against the concept of proximity detection, I just think people are probably fooling themselves if they think that it will appreciably improve safety especially if it's just part of a flood of data being thrown at the driver.

PeteHski

All comes down to how information is presented to the driver/rider. My Garmin Varia is almost perfect in this regard and really gets the important info (warning of approaching cars, distance and relative speed) across without causing distraction. Likewise I don't find Tesla UI distracting. In fact I find it the least distracting car to drive that I've ever owned. If there is a cyclist coming up ahead in the road it clearly shows them on the display and if AP is active it will automatically slow behind them. If I ignore the info and plough on regardless then I would get a whole load of visual and audio alarms before a collision. Hitting them would be a case of gross negligence - which I'm sure has occurred somewhere in the world.

LarrySellerz

GPS isn't as powerful as 5g integrated stuff like what is in smart cities in China. https://thechinaguys.com/china-smart...s-development/

PeteHski

If the Chinese government want to track my bike rides they can knock themselves out.

Iride01 

You and a few others seem to be dwelling too much on the actual implementation of TCAS and not the very basic concept behind it. Which is essentially traffic giving their position or at least stating their presence to any and every other nearby.

Reynolds 

Black Mirror stuff.

LarrySellerz

My point is that people are like "your cell phone already tracks you, whats the big deal with this other thing" while missing the power of 5g tech. I only brought up china because products like this only exist in a wide scale in a handful of cities like Shenzhen

Ironfish653

The thing is, we're relying on all the vehicles one might encounter to appropriately identify and react to your presence, every time, under any conditions. They're getting better, but autonomously driven vehicles are still not 100% perfect about not hitting things, especially in less-than-optimal situations.
I don't think it needs to be a fully -connected internet device, (broadcasting name, route, playlist and payment information, lol) but more like a simple electronic beacon saying: "cyclist" so the AGVs can't confuse you for a bush or other roadside hardware.

This idea isn't really new, either; I remember hearing about it when I was at FHWA in the 1990s, possibly NHTSA or Cal Trans was working on it, but the tech wasn't quite there yet (think about what computers and cell phones looked like 30 years ago)

Rally / Raid (like the Dakar Rally) uses a system called Sentinel, that alerts competitors when they're within 200m of another vehicle; since it's common to have different classes/speeds of vehicles on the same section at the same time, and may be obscured by dust, fog or terrain; and your typical rally pilot generally has his hands full just trying to keep it wheels -down and between the trees.

livedarklions

I don't think so. Basically, everybody but Tesla is giving up on self-driving cars because the supposedly very basic concepts become impossible to implement in the context of busy traffic. The basic concept of TCAS was never intended to be implemented in an environment where literally dozens of transponders are within a few feet of each other.

TBH, that website is incredibly vague about where this stuff is in terms of development. I don't think they're even showing proof of concept let alone suggesting anything about implementation. Hell, just the question of how many people need to adopt this for any tangible benefit to occur might be insurmountable.
I know, blah blah luddite, blah blah Wright Brothers, man on the moon. But this isn't Varia, this isn't anything that actually exists to be tried. At this point, it's little more than a PowerPoint presentation, and the vast majority of those come and go like the Hyperloop.

unterhausen

TCAS may or may not be different. I worked in field support engineering for airplanes and pilots were always ignoring warnings and blaming the airplane anyway. Then we would go through a big upgrade cycle to add warnings that they would ignore. And I can hardly blame them for some of that. I got a ride in the back of a fighter and there were warnings both on takeoff and landing, just when you don't need bs warnings.

Iride01 

Well I think you are putting too much into what you perceive as being analogous. I didn't really consider it a analogy, though I suppose it technically is. I was just giving an example of something that uses a similar concept. Please note that similar concept does not mean similar hardware, method of alerting or operating rules.

The basic concept of both systems seems to be that the vehicles involved constantly announce their presence in the area. It's much the same as me letting other know that I'm behind them or passing. Of course TCAS is amalgamated information radar ground stations that is processed and sent back to the TCAS unit. But still the basic concept is the airplane is actively letting other know it's there and that information can be used by other aircraft/aircrews to supplement and enhance safety.

Nothing was said by me about autonomous vehicles. So not sure why you bring that up. Also not sure why you keep bringing up use in crowded traffic situations as we don't always ride where it's crowded and certainly a lot of stuff happens out on a lonely stretch of road with presumably the driver claiming they weren't aware of the cyclist.

Iride01 

My car gives all sorts of warnings too. If I turn on the blinker to let others know that it's my intention to change lanes and another car is close by then I get an annoying warning even though I'm aware of the other car. Perhaps I should just do like many others and not use my blinker. If I back out of my driveway which is steeply sloped then it shouts about the street it perceives as a obstacle. And I even get a ding when the temps fall below 39°F or so that is suppose to let me know it might be icy roads.

So yes there is a lot of stuff to be considered for how one would be alerted. I'm thankful to have flown airplanes that were designed with the idea that you don't have to scare the b'jeezes out of the flight crew. Just let them know that something might be amiss. To bad car designers haven't figured that out yet.

Clyde1820

A simple IFF type system (identification friend or foe) might work. Something on the bike that takes very little power to operate; a signal sent out a couple times each second; and something on every vehicle as part of the cruise/autopilot/LIDAR gear, to sense proximity of such a signal; and a means of warning the driver and cyclist there's a situation brewing.

I suppose it'd be a new "IFF" sensor, for detecting such nearby transmissions. Yet another piece of "tech," sure. But might well avoid some of the "speed bump" life-taking that occurs now. Cyclists could have a low-powered transmitter; pedestrians could have one as well. If cars always have the sensing active, as part of the general safety set of equipment, ...

Something's got to change, given the increasing availability of equipment on autos that seemingly absolves a person of the need to consciously manage driving the vehicle, at least so long as such tech ain't perfect.

scott967

There will be a push for V2V because sensor data itself won't be good enough for automated driving. Probably implemented first on corridors like limited access roads. V2V will be a gold-mine of data, just as Musk gets tons of data from Teslas (and now Twits).

scott s.
.

livedarklions

I bring up crowded traffic areas for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks--that's where the money is. Generally, people are getting hit by cars at much higher rates and more in absolute numbers where there's lots of traffic. Riding on a lonely stretch of road is a piece of cake by comparison. If this is something that is only useful on the country lane, it's really not worth much.

I don't know why you are so stuck on the TCAS concept, it's not an adequate description of the ambition of this Spoke idea, and you're grossly oversimplifying the idea when you try to reduce it to that. Do I believe that we're heading towards a transponder future? No, because I think the coordination of such a system on crowded roads is an absurdly Herculean task, and it's close to useless on non-crowded roads.

I'm completely skeptical of this, the website seems really half-baked.

PeteHski

Here in the UK a lot of the more serious accidents (fatalities) occur on country lanes. They are generally quite narrow and winding with lots of blind bends and hill crests. Rural roads here account for over half of all fatal crashes, despite much lower traffic volume.

mschwett 

too many people die or are injured on bikes. if we’re serious about getting people out of cars and onto bikes, something like this needs to be done, but hopefully much, much simpler.

all you really need on the vehicle dash, IMO, is a four sided indicator with bright lights that get brighter and redder as you get closer to a bicycle. closure rate beyond a certain point and it gets noisy. should be extremely simple, and given how much tech is already legally required in cars it’s probably not anywhere near a hundred bucks worth of sensors and lights and code once amortized over millions of cars. i bet the bicycle side could be a self-powered widget, the way that some medical devices are powered by the body’s movement.

base2 

The problem, as I see it is the driving environment is too complicated for the speed at which drivers drive. This causes mishaps.

The engineers solutions to these mishaps is to increase safety margins with wider roads which in turn begs for higher speeds & the result is of course more severe mishaps. But also a feeling of entitled ownership over the shared space essentially given to them for one implicit use & of course, that breeds resentment and then contempt towards anyone or anything that dare slow that driver down from using all 100% of the safety margin the engineer provided.

Then that is combatted with more visual clutter in the form of signs begging drivers to do the right thing & please slow down. Which, of course drivers ignore because there is absolutely nothing about the road/street design & huge safety margins that instill any reason to do so.

The truth is: Drivers simply drive the speed they feel is right with minimum amount of attention necessary to the task as informed by the ample feeling of security/absence of risk the engineers road design gives them.

Absent speed governors, the solution is to rip a drivers brain out of mode #1 "automatic" processing & force them into mode #2 "conscious" processing through better design. Narrow lanes, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, visual cues, tactile cues, and a whole host of other measures continually implemented until the desired speed on a road or a street is actually driven.

There is an entire field of study here & nations of successful implementation that American traffic engineers basically ignore because they concentrate solely on the wrong metrics of car speed & vehicle throughput.

Every cyclist or pedestrian death is a traffic engineers failure to implement proper infrastructure design.

TCAS..,pbbbbth. Slow the cars & tech boys PowerPoint slide is a solution looking for a problem.

PeteHski

Here in the UK we have all a lot of speed bumps, narrow lanes etc. and they do at least reduce vehicle speeds in those localised areas - usually residential zones and town centres. But it doesn't do much for bicycle safety out on the open rural roads. My Tesla is very good at picking up cyclists in any conditons and collision warning is pretty effective (not that I trigger it very often!). I could still plough straight into a cyclist if I really wanted to, but I wouldn't be able to use the typical excuse of "the sun was in my eyes so I didn't see them". I would have to ignore both the graphics and early collision warning alarm before actually hitting them. If AP is active the car automatically slows to follow behind the bike, like it does with any other traffic. In this respect it works flawlessly except that the driver is free to over-ride AP at any time. So none of this tech prevents an idiot driver from hitting a cyclist, but I'm pretty sure it helps the more average driver in poor light conditions. At this time of year riding a bike around dawn or sunset on our rural roads is asking for trouble. There was at least one local fatality this year where the driver simply didn't see the bike for the low sun. That is such a common situation around here and genuinely blinding. That's where the electronic aids really make a difference. I feel much safer driving at this time of year in a Tesla or other car with similar tech.

Relating this back to V2V, I don't think the bike itself really needs an electronic beacon to be visible to a smart car like Tesla. The physical bike itself appears to be a good enough beacon. Same goes on the other side with a Garmin Varia. The car itself is the beacon and the Varia picks them up early enough to give plenty of warning.

livedarklions

In the US, the fatalaties are more like 70% urban. The proportion of fatalities is probably skewed towards rural roads as compared to urban as rural crashes are more likely to be fatal, likely because the speeds are higher. Nonfatal crash statistics are usually pretty bad due to methodology issues, but they're probably even more dominated by urban.

PeteHski

Speeds are higher, visibility is lower. These are the roads where cyclists get killed around here, even though the standard of driving on the whole is quite good and there is a reasonable tolerance toward cyclists. Drivers simply fail to spot them in time. This time of year is especially dangerous with low sun, dappled shadows etc. It's pretty scary actually both on the bike and as a motorist. I rarely ride over the winter months for these reasons and never close to dawn or dusk.