Bike light that projects the symbol of a bike down onto the road

My personal feeling is that they are distracting in so far as they cause people to notice the bike, which is intended affect. They are distracting in the same way that emergency services flashing lights are distracting. Personally, at night I use 2 lights, a steady light and a flashing light, and in the day I have a flashing light on (the change in brightness is more noticeable in the daytime than a steady light).

I've seen the epilepsy caused by bike lights thing mentioned a few times, but never by anyone who has directly experienced it (the author of the article you link, and indeed the person she links to, don't appear to have). In the absence of any hard numbers, my intuition is that the number of people suffering from a bike-light-induced-epilepsy incident would be much lower than the number of people suffering a hit-by-car-when-not-using-flashing-light incident, due to the lower number of suffers than cyclists and the requirement to come across a cyclist with light flashing at an appropriate rate, in their direction, with sufficient brightness. I'm happy to be proved wrong of course, and I do have an open mind on that.

Edit: Having read the 8 flashes a second figure mentioned below, and looked it up on other sources online, I no longer have an open mind on the issue!

Edit2: Ok, thats not strictly true, I always have an open mind about everything, but I'll need some hard numbers to pull me the other way...!

I think harmful is a better way to describe this. I hope it doesn't get popular enough that someone has to write an article entitled Symbol Projecting Bicycle Lights Considered Harmful.

That said, the people doing the work seem bright. I just hope their next project is something they could use jsmin for without violating its license.

Though Paris has surprisingly large avenues for an European city because of Haussman's renovations.

Hi guys, Emily here. Some very interesting points here and I'm sorry if points have been miscommunicated. Please can I try and set the record straight on a few of them.

Re. The brightness of the light: At the minute you are right, BLAZE is not a 'to see' super high-wattage light for use off-road, it is a 'to be seen' urban light for use on city streets. We are looking at developing a brighter for people commuting out of the city, but this will require a far larger battery.

Re. Dangers of riding into the blind spot: We completely understand and agree that by far the best way to stay safe as a cyclist is to not put yourself in vulnerable positions and to not take risks, for example undertaking large vehicles. That being said, in London as a cyclist, you will certainly and unfortunately find yourself in the blind spot of large vehicles when cycling in a cycle lane that allows you to travel faster than the traffic, for example. Or when a vehicle overtakes you and then later slows, they don’t know where you are behind them. I have been speaking to bus and HGV drivers, the police and driving psychologists on this scarily frequent scenario. A bus driver explained that you often have cyclists on their inside due to no dangerous riding on their part. Even once they’ve seen them, it is hard to keep track of them around the vehicle. Even with the extra mirrors (typically 6) it takes a few seconds to check them all properly, which is plenty of time to miss a cyclist in one of them. I believe someone who is interested in BLAZE, a product with such a strong message of cyclist safety and improving visibility, will not be the kind of person who puts themselves in a risky riding position intentionally. That being said, we will be sending out a message with the product to encourage people to ride safely and if anything be MORE aware of blind spots and other vehicles limited visibility.

Re. Seeing the projection: BLAZE is designed purely to increase your chances of being seen, and in time. Above and beyond a normal light. It increases a cyclist’s otherwise small footprint and gives them a presence AHEAD of their current position, warning road users ahead that they’re coming through. And pedestrians! So many times I’ve had someone step out through slow moving traffic into my path, probably not hearing my approach.

Re. The projection distance, 4 -6m is what we recommend as that’s just over half a bus’ length, so if you were alongside it, in its blind spot, the projection would appear out ahead of their cab. Their windscreens are completely vertical, so the road immediately in front of them can be seen clearly. You are of course right that a car can see less of the road immediately around them and if you worry more about cars pulling out in front of you, you may prefer to fix it projecting further. I agree people won’t be looking at the road for danger signs, but they can’t help seeing a flashing green symbol. It sounds daft, but it’s attached to a moving vehicle and once you see it it’s intuitive that it’s attached to a bicycle.

Re. Classifying the laser. It is the entire product that is classified, not the module, which is more powerful that 1mW. The lens is fixed across the aperture of the module and disperses the light to make it safe to human eyes.

Re. Legality of using the green light as a bike’s headlight. Just to clarify it is a white bike light first and foremost but also has the green laser as an added feature. Thank you so much for everyone’s engagement and comments! If anyone has any further questions I’m happy to answer them.

I am begging you to reconsider this project. At best it is useless, at worst it will get people killed. In a very literal sense you have fatally misunderstood how LGVs and cyclists interact, because you have failed to take into account the relative motion of the vehicles.

If a stationary cyclist is waiting at the nearside of a stationary LGV, then your device may potentially signal to the driver that there is a cyclist in his blind spot; Of course, this is a situation which no cyclist should ever allow to occur and is a mistake that kills several women every year in London. Encouraging people to take such a position would be a disastrous own-goal.

If a cyclist is undertaking an LGV, then the symbol will precede them into the driver's blind spot, only emerging when it is already too late. Cyclists usually travel at between two and eight metres per second. The reaction time of a healthy driver to a visual stimulus is between 0.7 and two seconds. If your device allows a cyclist to be noticed by an LGV driver in this scenario, they will be noticed too late for the driver to abort their manoeuvre and prevent the right-of-way violation.

Speak to an expert on the subject and model the scenario - the mathematics is quite straightforward. I'm sorry to shit on your dreams, but it's human lives we're dealing with.