Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Backtracker: Radar sixth sense for cyclists

dragoninnovation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 47 posts

Re: Backtracker: Radar sixth sense for cyclists

#11

Post by lucb1e »

I don't get how this works. The only dangerous situations that you can't prevent right now are a car coming from around a blind corner or a car that wants to turn while you go straight. In the former case you'd need to look around the corner, something I can't imagine how it would do. In the latter case it would need to magically know when a car, which might or might not have been close to you for the last mile, suddenly decides to turn, and far enough in advance that you can react to it. That too seems impossible without something to detect a turning light.

Maybe I'm missing something by watching the video without sound (I'd wake people up if I did), but it just doesn't seem possible to me to help in any way. Detecting that there is a car behind me at all is something we commonly do with a utility called "ears".

Re: Backtracker: Radar sixth sense for cyclists

#13

Post by ck2 »

Great idea.

Wish they could also detect when they throw bottles and other garage at you and take a photo.

But at least knowing they are coming is great, especially with hybrids and electric cars being nearly silent.

Re: Backtracker: Radar sixth sense for cyclists

#14

Post by randomdestructn »

Mithaldu wrote: post #2

Don't make me waste minutes of my time watching vague videos before i can actually find out what it is. Give me a technical drawing first, or at the very least have the decency and courtesy to have your video display what it does, accurately, in the first ten seconds instead of making me watch someone pump their bike. Also, holy shit, blinking backlights are a massive danger source. They may be nice when you're ridin…

> holy shit, blinking backlights are a massive danger source

Any citation for this? I've never experienced this supposed effect.

Re: Backtracker: Radar sixth sense for cyclists

#15

Post by kordless »

doctoboggan wrote: post #8

I think this product would be well served by alerting the user about car distance through some channel other than visual. When biking all visual attention should be focused forward, and the extra information sensed by this device could be delivered through some form of haptic feedback.

Vibrate the seat!

Re: Backtracker: Radar sixth sense for cyclists

#16

Post by d4m0 »

lucb1e wrote: post #11

I don't get how this works. The only dangerous situations that you can't prevent right now are a car coming from around a blind corner or a car that wants to turn while you go straight. In the former case you'd need to look around the corner, something I can't imagine how it would do. In the latter case it would need to magically know when a car, which might or might not have been close to you for the last mile, sudd…

This isn't for city riding. It is for riding on country roads. If you've ever done any road cycling outside of city centres, it can get very risky as the cars are going so much faster and there isn't the same road shoulder. Your ears are not enough. Personally I hate cycling on country roads because of this so I would definitely use this radar.

I agree with an earlier comment about non-visual feedback. An audio queue would be good (thinking like the trackers in the Aliens movies)

Re: Backtracker: Radar sixth sense for cyclists

#19

Post by mentat »

kordless wrote: post #15
doctoboggan wrote: post #8

I think this product would be well served by alerting the user about car distance through some channel other than visual. When biking all visual attention should be focused forward, and the extra information sensed by this device could be delivered through some form of haptic feedback.

Vibrate the seat!

Except the road does that fairly regularly and there's padding explicitly for that.
Post reply on HN