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A Car Horn For Bikes

12.09.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 5 Comments

On this morning’s club ride, we were crossing a major U.S. highway. The light was in our favor, and cross traffic was stopped. All except one guy, that is. He was turning right from the highway onto the road we were taking, and didn’t stop for the red light.

My friend Joe, who has already been hit by cars twice, hollered at the top of his lungs for the driver to stop, and got his attention. It was clear the driver didn’t want to stop, especially for a half-dozen scruffy cyclists, but when the rest of us joined in with the yell, he hit his brakes and came up short of Joe.

It made me think of an email I got during the week, from an inventor who thinks he has the answer to prevent close calls like this: a car horn for bikes.

A bit bulky. Would you have one on your bike?
A bit bulky. Would you have one on your bike?

The concept is simple. Just mount a horn on your bike that has the same loudness as a car horn. Not only that, it has the same sound as a car horn. The inventor, Jonathan Lansey, is looking for funding to get the horn into production. He’s got a Kickstarter site with more details about the horn, and is soliciting donations.

I won’t weigh in either way on this one. I normally do not publicize commercial products on this blog, but the Loud Bicycle Horn is something different, and I thought I’d at least let Bike Noob readers get a look at it.

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Categories // Safety Tags // horn

On the Bike, Behind the Wheel

11.27.2012 by Ray Niekamp // Leave a Comment

A friend of mine had a close call the other morning. She was backing her car out of her driveway, and nearly hit a cyclist.

The incident was unsettling to my friend, of course. “There’s nothing worse than being hit by a car with a ‘Be Kind to Cyclists’ bumper sticker,” she said.

Now, in defense of my friend, she had trouble seeing the cyclist, who was dressed in gray on an overcast morning. “If she’d been dressed in something a little brighter, I would have seen her sooner,” she said. But she added that if she had hit the cyclist, it would have been her fault, and not the woman on the bike’s.

Her story hit a chord with me. Recently, I was driving down a twisty, hilly two-lane road near my neighborhood. Speeds there easily hit 65 mph, although the posted speed limit is 55. I avoid the road on my bike, because I consider it too dangerous, although my club will ride on it for a short distance during one of our regular routes to the west. But we’re on a stretch only about a hundred yards long, and we turn off onto a residential street.

As I drove down that same stretch of road, I noticed another cyclist coming toward me. He was alone. He was riding the same route we do, and I knew he was going to turn onto the residential street. But for a moment, I found myself debating what to do. I could speed up, and get to the intersection before he did, thus asserting my dominance as a motorized vehicle, or I could slow down, and let him turn safely in front of me.

I’m ashamed that I even considered speeding up.

I slowed the car, much to the dismay of the driver behind me. The cyclist made his turn, and I continued on.

When we’re on our bikes, situations like that are no-brainers. We expect the oncoming car to slow, although we’re careful enough to have an alternative move in our minds if they shouldn’t. And when riding down a residential street, we expect drivers to look carefully for us as they back out of their driveways.

It’s not so simple, is it? There seems to be a difference in mentality when we’re behind the wheel as opposed to on the bike. If anyone should be at their safest around bikes when we’re in our cars, it should be us. Wake up calls like the one that happened to my friend and I are good reminders to be ever vigilant while driving. And they’re reminders that when we’re on our bikes, we should take nothing for granted.

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Categories // Safety Tags // cars

Bicycle Injury Study

11.15.2012 by Ray Niekamp // 1 Comment

This blog is aimed primarily at road bikers, and based on the comments and feedback I get from readers, most fit that description. However, I think it’s also safe to say that lots of road bikers don’t stick exclusively to road riding. They might engage in other types of riding, too, such as commuting or utility biking.

That kind of riding is usually done on city streets, and transportation cycling garners a small share of overall trips — as low as one to three percent in the United States, Canada, the U.K. and Australia. One reason often cited for this is safety. Bicyclists tend to be injured more often in countries where transportation cycling is less common.

Examples of cycle tracks in Holland.

A study done in 2008-09 in Canada has gotten some renewed attention here. It’s called the “BICE” study — for “Bicyclists’ Injuries and the Cycling Environment.” The study — of 690 bicyclists who had been hurt in bike crashes — found that the kind of infrastructure available for cyclists is associated with the risk of injuries from bike crashes.

The highest risk infrastructure was a city street with no bike lane and with parked cars. Other high-risk features included train or streetcar tracks, downhill grades, and construction.

Lower-risk features included off-street bike paths, major streets with bike lanes and no parked cars, and residential street bike routes. But the safest bit of cycling infrastructure was the “cycle track.” That’s a segregated bike lane adjacent to a street. They’re not seen much in the United States, but are quite common in the Netherlands.The authors of the study suggest that transportation planners can use the results to help pick cycling structure that will improve safety, and thereby, promote transportation cycling.

The University of British Columbia has a synopsis of the study on its “Cycling in Cities” website, and a complete version of the study can be found as it was published in the American Journal of Public Health.

How is safe cycling infrastructure being incorporated into your area?

 

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Categories // crash, Safety Tags // cycle tracks, infrastructure, Safety

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