Bike Projector Makes Lane For Rider 856
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."
mega fail. (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe on concrete (Score:4, Interesting)
but around here, the roads are black bitumen, so trying to paint them with a laser won't work so well, will it?
Except when the roads are wet, then it may work _too_ well.
Anyway, we have plenty of real bike lanes here, so I don't care.
Not to mention that green lasers are banned imports. Not sure if this will be a good enough reason
on my import permit application.
Re:Here's a thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's illegal to ride on footpaths here.
I don't ride '8 feet out from the curb', indeed that would be almost in the next lane in most cities.
I do however ride a fair distance from the curb when the lane is narrow. The problem with riding close to the curb is that doing so will give impatient motorists the incorrect impression that there is safe room to pass. By riding in the middle of the road drivers with poor spatial awareness won't attempt to pass me while there is insufficient room to do so. When the road is wide enough to allow a cyclist + a car, I hug the white line.
Ultimately, I don't care if you're pissed off that you have to slow down to 35k in a 50k zone as long as you don't crash into me.
Re:Here's a thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's wonderful to live in Copenhagen, one third of all personal transportation is on bicycle, a little less is public transportation (metro, trains and buses).
Motorists in this town actually feel that they have to fight to be allowed to stay in the city. Honestly, the city is doing what it can to ban gasoline vehicles from the inner city. Even though bicycles are slower, there's still a lot more room for these than for cars, and bicycles pollute less too.
So dear car-driver, get out off my town.
oh and to stay on topic. The real solution isn't to paint imaginary lanes, but to establish real bicycle lanes!
Re:Here's a thought... (Score:3, Interesting)
So long as bike riders pay for the roads to be built and maintained.
Where I live roads are exclusively paid for by car registration and fuel tax, so bike riders are indeed freeloading.
If they wish to submit themselves to the registration process, including safety checks in order to help maintain the roads then all the better and they would earn the same right to be on the road as cars.
Re:About an Autobahn lane projector ? (Score:4, Interesting)
If that thing's using lasers instead of just cheapo LEDs with something restricting the beam I REALLY don't want to be near it when it hits something reflective.
I assume they use something not terribly eye-burny if its made to be looked at by drivers.
Though on second thought, as a cyclist, I'm not sure a deathly laser assault on drivers is completely unwarranted.
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I still cringe when I think about the time my friend tried to use his laser pointer in a rainstorm.
A few years back, I mounted a laser pointer to my nes blaster gun for duck hunt. Simultaneously the smartest and stupidest thing I've done. Laser sight is badass, but the reflection off the CRT was a bit alarming.
So what make this news now? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://slashdot.org/submission/928767/Virtual-Bike-Lane-proposed-by-designers?art_pos=1 [slashdot.org]
Sheesh.
Re:Here's a thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Here's a thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
Share the road.
You, too.
I bike a lot, but I tend to get fed up with the bicyclists who feel "share the road" means, "I get to do what I want and you have to watch out for me."
I don't care that it's inconvenient for you to stop because you're clipped to your bicycle. If you're riding on the road, that means you're going to have to stop from time to time. If the toe clips make that a problem, ditch them. The road is not your private training track. You must share it with others.
I appreciate that it is physically impossible for you to travel the posted speed limit. But you don't have the right to block traffic. Here in California, you are legally required to pull over if you are unable to drive the posted speed limit and there are 5 or more cars behind you. This is true whether you're driving an antique car or a broken car or a bicycle. If you must ride so that you block traffic, do so briefly. If you reach a stop light, let the traffic that you blocked go past you when it turns green.
Signalling does not give you the right of way. Again, the variation of the "I can't stop", I've seen bicyclists who will stick their arm out and merge into traffic when the lane they are riding in is blocked, expecting the cars to "let them in." Nope. You wait for traffic to clear--just like you were a car. If that means you have to stop and wait, then you have to stop and wait. You have no more rights to the road than anyone else.
Re:Better than a tail light? (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. Overkill, much? :)
I dislike sunlight, so I ride my bike exclusively at night. We don't have much in the way of bike trails here, so I spend my time on the road.
I have a 3-Watt LED headlight (which was something like $12 from dealextreme), and a blinky-pattern red LED tail light. I wear a reflective (also from dealextreme) orange strap on my right leg, but that's mostly to keep my pants out of the chain wheels. Other than that, the wheels have each have the standard white retroreflectors on the spokes -- and that's it.
The only problem I've had with this simple arrangement are as follows:
1. After I first got the bike and started riding again, I was out in the country under a full moon with the headlight off, so I could preserve my night vision. (I was looking for deer, or any other interesting woodland creature.) A car came around a corner suddenly and quickly and loudly, and off the side of the road I went to avoid the crazy fucker. I clobbered a big rock with my left pedal, but luckily things worked OK otherwise. (The headlight stays on, now, at least anywhere within half a mile of an intersection, and/or if I see any traffic at all, and/or if I'm in an area that I don't know like the back of my hand. Or if there's no moon. Or...)
2. The LED headlight is really just a glorified aluminum-shelled flashlight with a handlebar mount. Works great, lights up everything really well, and is easy to detach for working on the bike or impromptu night hikes or whatever. The problem with it (if you can call it that) is that it has a round pattern: Shining it down the road has enough upward scatter that cars sometimes flash their highbeams at me. But on the plus side, I at least know that they can SEE me and they know I'm there.
(2 involves a choice: I can choose to aim the light down a little bit in response to this until the car passes, OR I can use the light's seizure-inducing strobe mode and perhaps aim up a few more degrees. I'm not enough of an asshat to do the latter, though...)
I would like to get an additional rear-facing light, since I can't control/evade oncoming traffic from the rear as well as I can from the front, and I've been thinking that a few strips of reflective tape would be helpful, but otherwise, things are good, IMHO.
Where'd you find the 1/2W LED tail light? I'm about out of room on my seatpost for mounting accessories; would it be suitable to clip to the back of my under-seat bag?
Re:Nice thought, bad planning (Score:3, Interesting)
To an extent I agree with you, I commute down a very busy dual carriageway where the average speed is somewhere between 70 - 80mph. Every Wednesday between 4 - 5pm, right in the middle of the rush hour, some absolute cretin on a pedal powered tricycle takes up the entire left hand lane whilst he crawls his way up the hills towards Lichfield. Consequently motorists approaching from behind are forced to slam on their brakes and switch lanes which is extremely dangerous for everyone as the ripple effect causes increasingly sharp braking all the way down the road.
There are several dozen far nice routes between Burton & Lichfield which this moron could take that don't involve endangering everyone else's life but this idiot is apparently either too stupid or too selfish to take them.
On the other hand I am a keen cyclist myself and would take issue with the part where you claim you're forced to overtake the cyclist around a blind bend. No one is forcing you to do that, if the safe course of action is not to overtake the cyclist then don't overtake them. I've often been cycling on roads such as that which you describe but only when they are the only option to get to where I want to go and if the car drivers are treating me with respect and slowing down behind me rather than trying to run me off the road I will pull over and let them pass when it's possible for me to do so. If drivers are trying to run me off the road then I'll cycle as close to the middle of it as I can so they have no choice but to slow up behind me.
Re:Here's a thought... (Score:3, Interesting)
Why don't you just use the sidewalk yourself? It's easier to do in a car (people WILL move out of your way, and if not you're driving a ton of steel - just run them over) AND you'll get to your destination much quicker.
I visited East Germany (Halle) just after the wall fell, and the drivers there very much did use the sidewalk, if the road happened to be temporarily blocked (by a car stopped to let out a passenger, for instance). They didn't slow down much either. Even if the sidewalk was a narrow one in the busiest part of the the pedestrian-filled city center.
In retrospect, I suppose it's an amusing story.
Insurance (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, smack my mirror on the way past down the queue of traffic, maybe scratch the side of my door with the pedal clips, and I just love it when a cyclist comes barrelling out a side street and into the side of my vehicle leaving a nice big dent in the door.
Yes, the cyclist may have a few scratches from his or her own carelessness, but it's _my_ insurance premiums that are going up due to someone elses carelessness. If cyclists want to be treated equally on these roads, then they can start being charged equally and held equally responsible for damage. For what it's worth, I am both a cyclist and a car driver, and yes... I do have insurance for my cycling stuff. Liability up to £3 million if memory serves.
Now, gerroff my lawn!
Just get off the damn footpath (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Better than a tail light? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Better than a tail light? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:About an Autobahn lane projector ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:About an Autobahn lane projector ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In NYC, we have less tolerance...for cars that (Score:1, Interesting)
From a NY perspective, the traffic problems have nothing to do with cyclists at all. They have more to do with a perceived right to bring a massive metal and glass behemoth into the world's most crowded places. Keep that sh*t parked outside the city and take public transportation.
I have a better idea. Let's keep the residents out of NYC, and then there shouldn't be as much need for bikes. And we can bulldoze apartments to put in more expressways and parking garages. That solves the problem nicely, and eliminates one of the very few things I dislike about NYC - New Yorkers!
Unfortunately no one cares about bikes or the lane (Score:3, Interesting)
Where I live (Costa Rica) it is a tidbit better than where I used to live before (Hungary), but generally at both places the sad truth comes down to this:
1. no one cares/respects bikes ... (it sucks to tell a dad in front of his family to please not get beaten up by you in front of the whole family and to politely stand down before bad things happen when he runs at you in a fist-fight position)....
2. when you are on the sidewalk you are a damn bicycle
3. when you are on the road you are not a vehicle enough - people would actually pull out in front of you thinking that you are just a bike and will definitely stop easily.... I ended up on the windshield like that once and believe me I have total control over my brakes and the bike as I was racing for years (now doing enduro which is a more high speed activity)
4. when you are on the bike lane (which is shared/divided by a line from the walking lane) you get people walking on the bike lane and I actually got into a fight over people blocking the way and then making nasty comments when you politely remind them that the pedestrian part of the was is over the line
5. If there is no physical protection on the lane it is used to : a: overtake other cars b: park cars
Well at least in Hungary there is a bicycle lane in the capital (dunno what is up with other cities) and mostly it is a lane divided from the sidewalk, but in Costa Rica there is not even a sidewalk for pedestrians... which sucks as I love to walk to places. Never rode a bicycle here, but have several heated conversation while riding my motorbike and idiots do not respect your way at all.......
Most bikers generally agree that if something happens here, just gently kick the door/blinkers of the car if an apology does not follow - motocross boots can do some damage with one single kick ...... I personally prefer to confront people and explain to them to respect bikers because one day someone will beat the crap out of them if you push the wrong biker too much. Hitting on the roof and screaming at the driver usually provides them with enough of a shock to look out before turning the next time....
Back to the topic: maybe in 50 years when we decide to build side walks bigger than 1meter and when these people learn how to keep their own lane.... maybe then.. just maybe we can have projected lanes .... yeah right
Re:Here's a thought... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:About an Autobahn lane projector ? (Score:3, Interesting)
In Ontario, it is an offense under the highway traffic act to open your door in a manner to obstruct moving vehicles on the road. And a bicycle is classified as a vehicle on the road.