NB2

Hello,

I am a university student trying to help with rider safety by developing a product. Current needs my team is trying to solve are rear object detection and warning, health tracking, GPS, on-bike messaging, and rider visibility through lighting. We would love to learn about more issues riders are having so that we can meet the existing needs.

With that said, what do you fear when riding? What makes you feel unsafe while on your bike? How can I help?
-Nate

10 Wheels

Cell Phone Drivers have killed a few of us.

NB2

10 Wheels
That is very unfortunate but not surprising. It is exactly something we are trying to solve. Do you think if you had something to make you visible enough to overcome their distractedness it would help? Or do you feel that if your bike could warn you about the oncoming driver that would help? Do you have other ideas for solving this issue?

alcjphil

Better driver training and more bicycle friendly law enforcement. No device can save you from a poorly trained, entitled driver driving a 3 ton vehicle at 3 times your speed

10 Wheels

Mine. On Strobe.

The Problems is

They Only See the Cell Phone.

NB2

alcjphil
Our product aims to provide cyclist assistance. While these solutions are beneficial to the problem, they are not exactly the ideas we are going towards. Do you have any ideas of how the cyclist can "have a fairer fight" against distracted drivers?

alcjphil

Design better cars. they and their drivers are the root of the problem

caloso

How about a handlebar-mounted EMP generator to fry the cell phone of the next driver I see texting while driving.

blacknbluebikes 

Garmin Varia is probably the most advanced "detection system" that has made it all the way to market. There's no lack solution for "visibility improvement" - after a dayglow jersey and lights, cyclists aren't hard to see. What you can interpret from the somewhat snarky answers above (normal around here) is that the biggest concern we have as cyclists is the automobile driver that is not doing their job. We know how to be seen, we know how to avoid trouble, we know how to manage maintenance and breakdowns. We just have little defense against stupidity. I know, doesn't help ya much...

alcjphil

+1
Cyclists already have plenty of devices and strategies for detecting cars and being visible. I built up most of my bikes myself and know ell how to maintain them. What we can't control is the most dangerous part of the equation, the cars and drivers that put us in danger. That is the area where the biggest safety gains can be made

billridesbikes

Do you have any actual experience riding a bike on the road in significant traffic for any length of time?

Have you read John Foresters's 'Effective Cycling' or Robert Hurst's 'the art of Cycling' as a start to understand the challenge we face as cyclists on the road?

Safety devices on bicycles only go so far because any kinetic impact from an automobile with a cyclist is likely life changing for the person not inside the car. All the mirrors, radars, hi-vis colors, and over-priced styrofoam won't change the physics of this interaction.

Automobile regulations have improved driver safety and reduced driver deaths, but cyclist and pedestrian deaths have increased because American cars have grown bigger, heavier and speeds have increased even as cyclists have more visiblity options than ever before. Often these days I'm only staring at the grills of large pickups and SUVs, and forget about making eye contact with the driver because you can no longer see them. I'm pretty sure many of these have very large blind spots in front where the driver can't see what is directly ahead of them.

The solution is not more vigelent cyclists, but lower speeds on surface streets (perhaps eventally remotely electrontically controlled) and safety technology that allows vechiles to indentify other roadway users and not run them over and pass them safely that is applied with the same zeal as safety belts, airbags, and crash safety ratings are applied for drivers.

NB2

Our project unfortunately does not give us the capacity to provide a legal change to cycling safety and to change driver habits. With the way you all describe your problem, it sounds like an accident is not only inevitable but likely. While my group isn't the most avid cyclists on the planet, nor are we the most well-read on the topics, we do have engineering backgrounds and are capable of providing something for you all, the cyclists, that would help. We want to leverage the skills we do have to help solve the problem of rider safety. You keep saying there is nothing more the cyclist can do to be safe; I simply do not believe that. Every time you turn your head to look behind you, you lose sight of what is ahead. Would you not agree that having some sort of device to allow you to see on-coming rear traffic and how laterally close it is to you is beneficial? We have done research into the products on the market, including the Varia, SmartHalo, and CycleSight, and feel that by combining and adding to these technologies, we can ease the difficulties that are associated with vigilance.


It obviously takes a lot of effort to be constantly vigilant of your biking surroundings, what we want to do is give the cyclist a system that gives them the most complete set of information about their surroundings in a compact way to optimize the amount of time they have to react. We know this isn't completely re-regulating the driver safety laws but what we want to know is, of the things we can help with, what would you want to see? I am here to try and help you all as the cycling community, if we can't get information about what you, as a cycling community, need (other than safer drivers...) we cannot help.

ridelikeaturtle

You can wear every piece of high-vis, wear all the helmets, attach every light... and you'll still risk being hit by a person driving, because we exist as cyclists.

It's victim blaming - because the issue here is "existing while cycling" - to focus on what cyclists need to do to avoid being killed by people who drive, and doesn't address the fundamental problem. In our case, the fundamental problem is people who drive.

Vehicles need to be designed such that they allow more vision for people who drive them. Currently, the opposite is true, vehicles are getting bigger and bigger, are much too powerful, are capable of ridiculously unnecessary speeds, and have limited vision of their surroundings. Why don't you try fixing any of those things?

CYCLISTS ARE NOT THE PROBLEM.

Bald Paul

I've been an automotive professional (technician, instructor, regional troubleshooter for an import manufacturer) until my retirement. I've also been cycling since the 70s.
Car technology has been increasing rapidly over the years. We now have collision avoidance systems, lane detection, automatic braking, parking assist, and even so-called "self driving" cars. All of these systems are touted as 'driver assists'. Unfortunately, it has been my experience that drivers are now relying more and more on these technologies, and are paying less and less attention to their driving as a result. I mean, why not look down at your phone to send that text when your car will stop automatically if the car in front of you does, right? Sometimes, attempting to manipulate some system on the car (navigation systems, audio systems, climate control, etc) can be just as distracting as that cellphone.
NONE of these systems are fool proof. NONE. There are some situations where they just don't work, or physics just cannot be compensated for.

Cyclists, however, are still dealing with being as visible as possible. New, hi intensity LED flashers help, and I have the Garmin Varia radar system on my bike, which is (IMHO) the best piece of safety "technology" available for riding. I also ride with a rear view mirror and a 360 degree video camera which captures vehicles as they approach and pass. Notice a trend here? Everything available to the cyclist is DEFENSIVE. Hopefully, the lights and bright clothing will catch a motorist's eye. Hopefully, if my radar tells me of an approaching vehicle, I can use my mirror to check to see if the driver isn't going to leave himself enough room to pass, and I have time to ride onto a lawn or into a roadside ditch if needed. There is nothing a cyclist can do to proactively prevent an inattentive motorist. I feel much less safe riding now than I did in the 70s.

ridelikeaturtle

The automotive industry is doing this...





When they should be doing more along the lines of this...

blacknbluebikes 

I seem to recall that "rear-ending" is not the most common type of auto-vs-bike accident resulting in injury. gotta see if I can find that. seem to remember "coming out of driveway" and "took a left in front of me" are the most common... anyone help me out on that?

blacknbluebikes 

This one is interesting: 2017 Bicyclist Safety Report , which notes (p.10) that "...only 11 percent of drivers detected the bicyclist before a collision occurred, while 68 percent of bicyclists saw the motorist prior to the crash. Interestingly, the researchers also found that “92 percent of the bicyclists who noticed the motorist had expected the driver [to] give way and could not stop in time to avoid a crash”". And this one, by Hamann and Schwarz is quite comprehensive.

Notso_fastLane

Disclaimer: These are illegal in the US.

Reality. I had a cheap chinese knock off that worked great for about 6 months before it stopped working (it was only $35, so no big loss).

https://www.perfectjammer.com/all-ce...-blockers.html

blacknbluebikes 

Here's a novel idea: create a ride-tracker in my phone that scores my rides for risk. thought is a derivative of "I keep telling my wife..." (which I never do, of course). if the app tracked me versus known road controls and then gave me positive, constructive feedback, that might be interesting. "BNBB, you can improve your stopping rate at stop signs." "BBNB, you could have a safer commute on these alternate roads with only 3 extra minutes travel time"; "The roads you took last week are 30% high traffic, 20% residential and 50% rural."; "This week you reduced your time on busy roads by 5%"; "Here are the roads near you with the highest number of BMV accidents". "BNBB, you passed thru 17 stop signs on this trip, and you stopped at 3, slowed at 11 and completely blew through 3 of them." Just an idea. If we can't tweak the bad drivers, maybe we can still help cyclists consider different habits.

Notso_fastLane

I'd like to see a multi-country comparison to see what works and what doesn't. Obviously, the US is currently trending in the wrong direction, which may be a combination of factors, but it would be great (and a lot of work, obviously) to see a comparison with other places where bicycling is at least as prevalent and compare and contrast roads, laws, statistics, etc.

Also, your second pdf won't seem to open for me. It's either corrupted, or a wrong file type.

Notso_fastLane

This is a great idea!

blacknbluebikes 

regarding that 2nd pdf, I see that the esteemed University of Iowa has not upgraded to https, so some browsers will block... here's a string to drop into a search engine: safer sim university of iowa hamann schwarz

blacknbluebikes 

Is the US getting worse? I'm not so sure... It seems to me that the death rate is not really increasing as much as participation ... but that's my speculation...

Notso_fastLane

I just looked at the raw numbers trend, yeah. I didn't see if they had an estimate for per capita/rider miles figure, but that's probably harder to estimate for bikes than cars.

NB2

This is something we could definitely implement. Thank you for the idea!