581–590 of 618 posts
Overall this bell seems like the wrong solution, and it took me a while to realize not every country has outlawed headphone wearing for bicyclists, something I guess I took for granted. It doesn't make sense for a car driven to use headphones, so not sure why it'd make sense for other vehicle-users to use them either, as you say, we really do use our ears to help navigate traffic so allowing people to be so careless…
It's unfortunate that this is necessary. It should be obvious that wearing noise cancelling headphones in trafic, including as a pedestrian, is a bad idea. I'm legally blind, so I have my own bias here, but I think people really over-rely on sight. If you do want to listen to something while walking around a city, I can highly recommend bone conduction headphones, that keep your ears unblocked.
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Jokes on them for the wasted resources. If they don’t intend to market, I hope someone will. Where I live cyclists use ANC headphones all the time, and I’m tired of the near misses. Student cyclists that ignore the rules and wear ANC (or even large headphones) should be fined more often.
You seem to have misunderstood the invention. It’s not about cyclists wearing headphones.
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>My opinion as a cyclist is that I should basically only be using my bell on pedestrians when the pedestrians are wandering onto the bike lane. If im cycling through a shared space, I find it extremely rude to ring the bell, because it feels like I'm telling people to get out of my way, but they have just as much right to a shared path as I do. The culture around this varies a lot. I'm in Melbourne, Australia. Virtua…
I prefer to slow down and actually just say hello to them, they'll usually say sorry and I'm back on my way again. Just ringing a bell, or worse a horn, scares them and they need to turn round to figure out where you are and whether you're about to squash them. I don't feel I have the right to do that to someone just out enjoying a peaceful walk. On the other hand, I've been angered by dog owners when running who jus…
Yes, it's very context-dependent. I'm going to behave very differently in an area where there are hundreds of cyclists every hour compared to a place where there might be one or fewer.
The real trick with bell ringing is to try to get the distance right. Too far away and they won't hear. Too close and it might startle them, and they won't have enough time to react properly.
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No, every bike path in a city inevitably has crossings or is laid out next to a sidewalk. People just do their random-walk thing (Brownian motion, really, sometimes) and wander into the bike path.
Sometimes you clearly see more people on the bike paths than on the regular sidewalks. And I definitely attribute that to its smoother nature compared to the fake cobbles you have in many places, amplifyied if there is a baby stroller in the mix.
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Any innovation benefiting cyclists and coming from the auto industry is a way to move attention away from the fact that cars are the most dangerous thing on the road.
Well, obviously. What else did you expect to be the most dangerous thing on roads? Sharks?
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… I have a modern bike (a Specialized). The tires' rated range is 75psi to 100psi. I usually pump it to around 80–85psi. The tires are 33mm.
You're overinflating your tires. A lower pressure will increase your speed and efficiency unless you're riding in a velodrome. Here's a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7r8f3w89XeM (watch out, there's a lot of extra stuff in this video about the machine they use to measure efficiency)
The video's result for both tires they tested was peak efficiency at 5 bar. They had a really coarse sampling of a whole bar, so that works out to a pressure of 65–80 psi.
Coincidentally, I bought a 12v car horn yesterday with the intent of wiring it into my ebike's power supply with a little button on my handlebars. Not because of other cyclists or pedestrians wearing (anc) headphones but because modern cars are so heavily sound-proofed they don't hear a bicycle bell anymore. A recent incident with an inattentive taxi driver in a brand new EV nearly flattening me prompted me to want t…
Yeas ago I motorcycled a lot, all over the world. I escalated to an air horn and hi-viz. But I pretty quickly realized that these made no tangible difference to the behavior of larger vehicle drivers. So I ended up for later vehicles with a stock horn and hi-viz only for heavy rain. These days our family cycles a lot for commuting. It’s really easy to observe that people in vehicles treat us far better if we look lik…
Car horns are useful warnings because speeds are higher and thus stopping time is longer--more opportunity for someone to hear and react.
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Sadly I had to kick a few cars that thought they could run me off my motorcycle. Worked every time. All of them didn't look out the window or they would have looked right into my face. Yelling and horn did absolutely nothing. Most of them were extremely apologetic or even shocked (as if I appeared from thin air). None of them were angry for scratching their door. Some people are just lost in thought it seems...
> or even shocked (as if I appeared from thin air) Motorcyclists are invisible. Never rely on others seeing you, ride as if they're an obstacle you have to navigate. You can hide a whole truck behind the A-pillar of modern cars, let alone a motorcycle. At certain angles, human eyes have complete blind spots that we're not aware of because our brain filters them out. Motorcycles fit perfectly into those. Never hover i…
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Jokes on them for the wasted resources. If they don’t intend to market, I hope someone will. Where I live cyclists use ANC headphones all the time, and I’m tired of the near misses. Student cyclists that ignore the rules and wear ANC (or even large headphones) should be fined more often.
You seem to have misunderstood the invention. It’s not about cyclists wearing headphones.