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Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

skoda-storyboard.com

441–450 of 618 posts

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, the sentence doesn't sound ridiculous if you're cycliing at 18mph towards someone, without a front brake, and your precaution is "it's OK, I can guess which way they're going to go".

The sentence was very harsh compared to lots of drivers who have killed people in far worse ways. I don't want to excuse him as he was also a complete arsehole on social media after the collision and his cycling was reckless. The lesson is that even if you think you have priority, you have to do all that you can to avoid hitting someone.

Hm yeah, I don't know about drivers' sentences, true.

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#442
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I saw one recently where the cyclist shouted out something like, "ON YOUR LEFT!" and all it did was startle the crap out of a jogger who spun around into the path of the bicycle. Luckily just a close call. That cyclist's "warnings", with no time for pedestrians to react properly, were really just a game of Russian roulette. (And really rude, as you say).

Unfortunately in many jurisdictions it is legally required to do that when passing a pedestrian.

Can you list some examples? When I lived in Chicago it was quite common for cyclists to shout this on the long lakefront trail, I wonder if that's the case there too.

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also triggered by baby screams unfortunately

An evolutionary adaptation to ensure parents wearing headphones don't ignore their babies.

We don't ignore him. I wear headphones while soothing him.

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#444
post #228

For anyone that wants to actually hear the bell before reading all the marketing material: Bell sound starts at 2:09 in the video.

And seems to sound like a normal bell, or maybe that's just my ears. I guess I can see why they didn't put it up front, but that was also all I wanted.

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The construction site next door is using those vehicles, and they're also a lot more pleasant throughout the day. It's easier to tune out white noise than beeping. The first cshh is a little louder than the others, which is a nice design touch.

Speak for yourself, I can tune out a steady beep much easier than the sound of a seagull being strangled to death. (That's what the ones around here sound like anyway.) On a more serious note: the loud beeping backup alarms were DESIGNED to be annoying and difficult to miss. I would not be surprised in the least if a study showed these "less annoying" backup alarms correlating to a higher number of children being run…

There have been studies and those resulted in the less annoying backup sounds. These sounds are essentially harsh white noise, which has one significant difference to the beeping: it's level drops off differently with distance, meaning you can blast it louder and people who are really in the wrong spot will notice better it means them, while people who are not meant will not be annoyed or fatigued by it. Two noise sources combine different than two tonal sources and the human ear can locate broadband sources better than single tones.

This was developed especially for use in backup heavy environments like harbors where workers started ignoring constant beeps.

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#447
post #435

I'm very sceptical of their claims that ~780Hz is in some way special, especially the way they represent it graphically. Playing a frequency sweep while wearing WH-1000XM3 headphones, I don't notice any particular drop-off there. Near where I live, heavy goods vehicles are fitted with reversing indicators that make a "cshh cshh cshh" sound i.e. pulsed white-noise. White noise like that is the hardest for ANC to cance…

Right? This feels like an "arms race" similar to scraping vs. anti-scraping; countermeasures will be developed, likely due to the action of actors entirely disconnected from what you're doing, but to block something else in the ecosystem... and you'll need to re-engineer your approach entirely. Rinse and repeat. (The amount of innovation in anti-anti-scraping that's resulted from "sneaker bots" - automated scalping o…

I don't see why this would become an "arms race." There's no particular competitive value in filtering out this ONE sound.

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#448
post #357

This seems to be part of a type of brand marketing where a brand claims it has invented something, but the only thing that ever exists of significant economic value is the attention raised by the promo video / article. Not the thing/service. Examples: - Samsung safety truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GNGfse9ZK8 - Citroën motion sickness glasses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco63dlq_WE - Amazon Prime Air http…

I love these types of videos because they create this fiction of how design happens, where people sit around a table with drawings and or come up with beautiful mock-ups (the motion sickness glasses is a good example). Often, a lot of design decisions are super obvious and don't require a lot of sweat and collaboration to come up with, but in videos they're made to appear very difficult as it presents better. And other things are super messy, but you're not going to show that as it's hard to communicate.

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#449
post #425

In the scenario presented (London, mostly not segregated bike paths), the solution is for the cyclist to ride in a way they're not endangering pedestrians. There's even a fairly recent UK law ( https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-highway-code-8-change... ) that more or less says in a collision, the "stronger" road user is at fault unless proven otherwise. That applies to car v. cyclist as much as cyclist v. pedest…

Writing as a regular cyclist, the other side is seemingly always the problem. Cars, cyclists, pedestrians, each of them thinks they are right and other side is wrong.

That seems to be exactly the case. As a pedestrian, my problem is the cyclists who think the sidewalk is for going faster than the speed limit and the bike lane is for pedestrians to dodge into. As a driver, it's cyclists who think "you can treat stop signs as yields if there's no traffic" means "stop signs are go signs, yield signs are go faster signs, there's no such thing as a red light". I'm sure if I biked, I'd be complaining about cars not seeing me and pedestrians being unpredictable and hogging the sidewalk. I'm sure if I was a train driver, I'd rant about cars blocking the tracks!

Re: Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

#450
post #357

This seems to be part of a type of brand marketing where a brand claims it has invented something, but the only thing that ever exists of significant economic value is the attention raised by the promo video / article. Not the thing/service. Examples: - Samsung safety truck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GNGfse9ZK8 - Citroën motion sickness glasses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aco63dlq_WE - Amazon Prime Air http…

I think you nailed it. You can't even buy this bike bell, as far as I can see.
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