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Bike Projector Makes Lane For Rider
hh4m writes "Whether it's San Francisco, New York, or any bicyclistic city in between, you're destined to witness biker after biker dancing with danger, especially at night when visibility is uncomfortably low. Alex Tee and Evan Gant's LightLane device was recently just a concept but is soon to enter reality as a much-needed visual declaration of personal biking space. With a dire shortage of dedicated lanes, LightLane provides urban cyclists with a solution that adapts to them and any route they make take. The compact projector mounts easily to the rear of a bike frame and projects a bike lane-inspired linear pattern that provides great visibility and a familiarity that helps catch a driver's attention."
That's the purpose. So Mr. car driver, you're afraid of my bike-frame-mounted piece of laser awesomeness? Then GET SOME DISTANCE OFF ME.
Or in other words, if you're blind enough to ignore me on the road, I'll make sure you stay blind for good. Besides the lane projected in the image is red, and everyone knows in the animal world red means "don't mess with me".
"Gee officer, the bicyclist pulled out this device, blinded me, and the next thing, he was decorating my bumper."
Juries would find for the motorist, and charge the bicyclist with a criminal charge of reckless endangerment, perhaps assault with a deadly weapon.
Bicyclists are a scourge on the roads. For each single guy biking, the oil and gas used by other motorists to pass, evade, get stuck at stoplights, and make up for poor riders more than compensates for the people not using cars. Some bicyclist gets whacked because they blow a light or stop sign, and the whole community comes out in the stupid critical masses to jam up roads in an act of moronic revenge.
This isn't to say bikes are OK, but cities spend millions for dedicated bike trails and bike lanes for them. However, even the best paved bike roads are usually not good enough for some, so you will get the blokes jamming up the highway and playing chicken, hoping that they get struck by someone unwary or distracted so they can win the lawsuit lottery.
Until you start paying rego, compulsary third party insurance and obeying the road rules you don't have any moral right to make use of the road.
Also one person holding up 10, 20 or 100 others while freeloading on the road that the others are paying for isn't exactly the way to make friends.
Or in other words, move the fuck over.
And I ask you this, would it bother you if I ride my unregistered dirt bike, horse or skateboard in the "bike lane" slowing you down? Goddamned right it would, you pricks are as aggressive as, it even shows in your attitude in internet postings.
Ultimately I don't care if you have to ride in the gutter because you want to do 20k in a 80k zone as long as you don't crash into me.
I ride three or four times a week and know my place when I hit the road, that is I'm living on borrowed time at everybody elses expense, patience and convenience riding my bike on a piece of government infrastructure that was not designed for nor payed for by push bike riders. When your in that position it's best to at least be a little coy about it, strangely there's a type of person who thinks that they're somehow entitled to freeload and intentionally piss everyone else off just because they feel like it.
Attention whores generally.
It's a difference in scale. A 10-20% slowdown from a car in front of me going slow is annoying, and 80% slowdown because of some douchebag on a bike who won't get over to the side is fucking unacceptable, especially when I've got somewhere I need to be, like work.
I did not mean being directly in the oncoming traffic lane. Just getting real damn close to that lane to be as far away as possible from the guy on the bike to make it as safe as possible for him. If he was really directly in the middle of the lane, then I would just be fucked. I would have to wait till I had enough visibility to safely pass him, with my hand on the horn the entire time. Some people might find that obnoxious, but if he really does not have a right to be in my lane (let's just assume that) then putting me in that kind of danger and being in a traffic lane is cause enough to get the horn.
It's novel, and I bet there *has* been widespread interest and encouragement - I've seen this discussed and sent around (with positive sentiment) many times over recent months.
It's a stupid idea because it's illegal. You're not permitted to drive around with shit like this operating on your vehicle, and a bicycle is considered to be one of those. It will make you more visible, but it's still going to distract people and thus make the road more dangerous, not safer, for anyone.
I think it's ridiculous that we have cars everywhere, and not bicycles and golf carts or something. We should replace cars with subcompacts at the LARGEST (Golf carts become grocery getters; subcompacts and Ks become luxury vehicles, heh) and replace interstates with trains onto which these tiny cars can be trivially loaded. With that said, putting some lasers on your bike is only going to get you killed faster.
It sucks to have to move if you don't like how your town treats you, but that's precisely what you should do, because otherwise nobody gets the hint. Otherwise, if there's enough of you to be statistically significant, why don't you and the other bicyclists in your area get together, and make a political difference? Get a cyclist on city council or something, and make a change. Don't just put some stupid lights on your bicycle and expect it to help when you're riding up the middle of my fucking lane.
Coming from Santa Cruz, CA and living in Lake County I have the opportunity to see dipshit cyclists act like dipshits all day, so my bicyclist sympathy-o-meter is pretty damned low. When I was a teenager riding around Santa Cruz, I never had the problems I heard those spandex-wearing fruits complain about, because I am capable of staying out of the fucking road. When I go up the ice cream grade and there's some road biker with his logoed arse bouncing in the middle of my lane on the uphill, I just push the pedal down real hard so they can hear the turbo howling. And THERE you have the option to ride a mountain bike and ride trails practically everywhere instead of sucking exhaust, but I guess that would make too much sense.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah... I know it's just easy to assume I am a frustrated car driver and that the laws really do support cyclists in my city. That would be easier than actually responding to my arguments wouldn't?
I know it's hard. Because, if I am right about the laws in my area, then cyclists really don't have any rights to be on the road, and there is no "sharing". The danger they represent on roads without bike lanes is unacceptable and unfair to the rest of us motorists and they are not legally entitled to place us in danger.
You see, that is really where I am coming from. A place of reason and rationality. That regardless of laws, there is a much greater danger sharing the roads with bicycles when they were not designed for it.
But that's okay. Ignore that argument, like many others have , and just try to focus on the baseless fact that I am self-centered, and simply a frustrated driver unwilling to be "play nice" with others since it might take me 3 more minutes to get to work.