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Radar Changing the Face of Cycling
First time accepted submitter Franz Struwig writes "MAKE Magazine has a great review of a bicycle radar product — showing off some of the early prototype innards: "The latest version features a 24 GHz radar antenna — high enough to resolve more targets and small enough to fit on a bike — an ARM processor, and Bluetooth LE to communicate with the front unit. The radar creates a doppler map, and recognizes not only the vehicle, but how far away it is and how quickly it’s approaching. It communicates this to the cyclist by a system of LEDs, and to the car by increasing the rate at which the tail light blinks as the car gets closer."
As a long-time road cyclist I can say this is a completely useless product. Obviously if one is riding on the road one is going to be passed by cars. And so long as one is not an idiot listening to music while riding, one can *hear* vehicles approaching from the rear. This device can't discern how closely a vehicle is going to pass you, which would be the only useful information - warning you if the vehicle is going to pass, say, less than three feet away horizontally.
. . . do something about the assholes on bikes that think that little white line and bike lane are some sort of magic force field that protects them from massive hunks of steel inches to their left...
As you drive, do you also swerve into cars separated from you by the "magic force field" white line? Or are you concerned about your paint job in a car vs. car scenario? Perhaps bikes/bikers just need some extremely aggressive abrasive on their sides to protect them from motorists.
I am not a crackpot.
bikse are not the raod people you make them pour out there money on this
I'll have one of what you're drinking.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
How often is that? I know an epileptic who was 20 years without a seizure, but still couldn't get her license back. Are they letting epileptics drive these days?
And what do you avoid? 8-70 Hz? More? Less? There isn't a single perfect flash to trigger it (the most reliable triggers are multi-color, which this is not, and the studies indicate that color of the monochromatic flashes matters, so red may not have the same "optimal" frequency as white, or other colors.
Learn to love Alaska
I commented elsewhere that this is heavy, complicated and no better than a tiny rear flasher. Plus, while getting rear-ended by a car sounds scary, it's one of the least common bike accidents. According to these stats (based on bike collisions in 3 cities in 1995), only 3.8% of crashes were car rear-ends bike:
http://www.bicyclinglife.com/L...
There's some cool tech in this product, but it won't help with the most common bike collisions (#1 car pulls out in front of bike, #2 parked car door opens into bike).
That would never work in Seattle with our militant bike riders.
I was helping with a bike race once. We'd have a car pace behind the groups of riders at a safe distance to keep other cars away from them. One of the asshats on a bike seemed to think I was stalking them or something. Started yelling and gesturing at me, then dropped back to me and yelled to "get the fuck out of here and quit following us". Told him who I was, and radioed his number to HQ. His raceday ended at the next checkpoint.
Never did figure out his problem. Either 'roid rage, or just a bike rider with a bad attitude.
Now I just help with the mountainbike races like the Wilderness 101. My kind of people.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Turning left on a bicycle would generally mean that you just come to a stop at the far right corner of the intersection, where pedestrians would wait to cross, and walking your bike across the street as a pedestrian when you get a walk signal. After clearing the intersection, you can get back on your bike and continue riding, completing your the left turn.
Really... it's not a remotely hard concept to grasp.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yes, epileptics can drive. It varies by state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
I know an epileptic who had his license pulled after a single vehicle accident. He was able to get them back in about a years time but needed his doc to sign off on it. The doctor is the one who pulled his license too. The state didn't even cite him for the accident but his doctor filed the paper work, told him his license was no good and by the time he was released from the hospital, the revocation letter was sitting in the mail box. He ran up a telephone pole guide wire and flipped his car on it's roof then proceeded to bang his head and everything else not restrained by the seat belt off the steering wheel and whatever else was in the way while the seizure was happening- no damage to anything but the car and himself.
"Many of them ride in the lanes for cars even when there are marked bike lanes. "
They are allowed to do so.
"many of them refuse to use the bike lanes to keep from getting crushed by buses pulling over to the curb, but it's still annoying."
No, actually. They're doing it to avoid being doored by drivers, the top cause of injury in US cities. Being doored can kill them either from the impact with the door, or if they're thrown outward into traffic and then run over.
The problem is that you and your fellow drivers can't check your fucking mirrors before opening your doors. We're reacting to that. Either check your fucking mirrors, or stop complaining that what we're doing is "annoying" you.
So to ride a bike, you must walk it across intersections? Note, that's not how the instructions for using bikes on the street work. The official instructions for Texas are for the rider to safely leave the bike lane, merging into regular traffic, then change lanes to the regular car left turn lane, turn left when safe and legal to do so, then return to the right side of the roadway.
Maybe the anti-bike nuts hate bikes because they don't even know the bike rules.
Learn to love Alaska
Such a simple concept that you managed to get it wrong, apparently.
From my state's laws:
s. 316.151 – Required Position and Method of Turning at Intersections
(b) Left turn . A person riding a bicycle and intending to turn left in accordance with this section is entitled to the full use of the lane from which the turn may be legally made.
If you are making a left turn at an intersection on a bicycle, you get in the turn lane just like a car. Laws could of course vary by state, but in every state I've biked in, this was the case.
To leave the bike lane, you still have to yield to vehicles that are not in the process of changing lanes. Since cars are typically moving faster than you, you generally wouldn't be able to do this safely unless there was absolutely no other traffic moving in the same direction (which isn't impossible, but is unlikely on a road that has high enough traffic volumes that it would warrant having a controlled intersection), and if you got rear-ended by a car while you were trying change lanes, you would be 100% at fault for the collision.The safest thing to do, in my experience, is just stay on the right hand side and manually walk the bike across to get onto the road you intended to turn onto.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The problem is that there are no license requirements for bikes, so many riders are totally unaware of the actual laws, and often highly inexperienced..
Drivers at least have to pass a test, and while there are plenty of bad drivers they should at least have some experience and understanding of the rules.
On a daily basis i see bikes ignoring red lights, while to see a car go through on red is pretty rare. Just yesterday i saw a bike come off of a footpath, go directly across a 2 lane road without slowing or checking for vehicles (causing several cars to hit the brakes) and into the wrong end of a one way street.
And it's no better as a pedestrian, i was shouted at by a bike rider who took issue with the fact i was in her way by walking down the sidewalk causing her to hit the brakes. It's illegal to ride there, why should i be forced to get out of the way of a bike speeding down the hill ringing a bell and shouting?
Also when trying to cross a road, you get a group of vehicles which pass you, and then a long spaced out stream of bikes that fill in the gap before the next group of vehicles - giving you no time to cross.
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Whether they are "entitled" to use it or not is irrelevant if they cannot safely enter the lane in the first place, because cars move much faster than bicycles, preventing a cyclist from being able to change lanes from the rightmost lane (designated bike lane) to the leftmost without causing an accident that they would actually be considered entirely at fault for.
Going slower than the traffic behind you wants to go is not "causing" an accident. What causes accidents is idiotic responses to a slow vehicle in the lane. Just slow down, be patient, and there won't be an accident.