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TECH NEWS
Ding Bike LightBike light that illuminates the road launched on Kickstarter
A new bike light that illuminates the road has been launched on crowd funding site Kickstarter, by a UK car lighting designer after he was knocked off his bike in South Australia.
Using LED lights shining both ahead and downwards, the Ding bike light illuminates the road in front, and a space 3m wide by 1.5m deep, around the rider.
The light bulb moment struck when its designer, Des Burns, who has designed lights for Jaguar and Landrover, was knocked off his bike on the way to the pub one night by a turning car. Although he had front and back lights the driver apparently didn't see him crossing the road, leaving him with a hole in his jeans, a gashed knee and a damaged bike.
Burns drew the initial designs on a beer mat. He said: "I met up with this friend of a friend at the pub, another engineer. He was laughing at the hole in my pants".
"I was not a big bike rider at that point. I'd ride to town with my wife in the afternoon or take the bike track to work once or twice a month. But this guy at the pub said it's quite common, riding at night near cars, you take your life in your own hands."
"The sketch was a joke really – I thought of some sort of light shield around a bike so motorists can see you."
The Ding light shines a rectangle of light of 150 lumens down at the road either side of the rider, with 400 lumens of forward power. The light weighs 110 grams.
So far the product's crowd funding page reports more than 300 backers for the light with around £48,000 pledged of its £80,000 target and 13 days to go.
Of course, it's not the first experimental bike light, and it probably won't be the last, as cyclists try to tackle the issue of drivers failing to see them at night, from the light that illuminates the rider to the one that shines a bike on the road using a green laser.
Latest Comments
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Musette? Although this "hoopla"-style handover is probably not now recommended?
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When someone says "It's an accident waiting to happen" they often mean "I'm an accident waiting to happen".
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Well that's nice - you've stolen a unicycle parking space!
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21 comments
Sooo the good news is that there is more power in the light.
The bad news is that it's slipped a bit (what project hasnt on kickstarter ?) and it's missed our winter completely. Never mind - hopefully it'll be ready for Spring !
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dingbikelight/ding-bike-lights/post...
I'm not surprised that some people want to light themselves up like a Christmas tree, it can be a testing experience riding in traffic. Good luck to this inventor but you can just turn a spare light round on your bars to illuminate yourself, add one to a chain stay pointing down if you feel the need to ride in a pool of light.
Or, you could festoon your bike with cheap Lezyne Femtos. Five lights is the max I can get on my seat post (I've just checked) I think any facing sideways would have to be felt tipped in orange though...
I'm in. What sold me was his experience with automotive lighting. I'm interested to see what can be done with a focussed beam. I usually use the torch type lights and it's obvious that most of the beam isn't used properly.
Also from personal experience - at night you are most at risk from drivers in side streets pulling out into you. I usually cover this with the cheap tyre fly lights which are very effective but hardly anyone uses them.
And the price seems a bargain
I'm in. What sold me was his experience with automotive lighting. I'm interested to see what can be done with a focussed beam. I usually use the torch type lights and it's obvious that most of the beam isn't used properly.
Also from personal experience - at night you are most at risk from drivers in side streets pulling out into you. I usually cover this with the cheap tyre fly lights which are very effective but hardly anyone uses them.
And the price seems a bargain
400 lumens is only just enough for relatively sedate commuting in unlit areas IME but that's probably the target market anyway. I, like others, aren't really convinced this adds anything new though. Reflectives and things like fibre flares should cover side-on lighting. Mind you I have a bad habit of checking what gear I'm in visually so I guess this would help with that...
politely, this is bollocks, 400 Lumens is fine IF it is used correctly, 1000 Lumens can be crap, 200 Lumens can be overkill, it really is all about how the light available is used.
lumens only tells you the total light output, NOT the intensity. Loads of lights 'need' high lumen values because they piss light everywhere, not where it's really needed. That may be ok to a degree with offroad lights, but is also more likely to dazzle other road users. Some manufacturers - eg Busch&Muller with their range of battery and dynamo lamps - use reflectors within the lamp to shape the beam so you get a decent sized pool in the road that actually allows the surface to be seen.
Thanks for the advice Kandinkski, I have changed my pledge to the three amigos and got three lights instead of one. I know Des from my Jaguar days and he knows how to design lights, he has been doing it for 20 years.
It is not always about the lumen from the diode but the amount of useful LUX projected forward. So projecting all of the 400 lumen into the right places will give a good result.
I have read some other articles on the Ding Light and well known bicycle journalists whom have seen the lights close up say its a game changer in innovation. time will tell, but I think it looks really good.
Des was a perfectionist so it should be well made and well designed.
Agreed, I'd take the knowledge, insight and experience of someone like Des Burns over the easily-made, negative & anonymous comments on this or any similar road.cc thread.
There are other pledges there where you can get more than one.
A brilliant and talented engineer can tackle a problem like this, come up with the most elegant and exquisite solution, and we can all appreciate the craftsmanship.
But unless it actually addresses the right problem, it probably isn't actually useful other than looking nice.
I'm sure the inventor will do a brilliant (!) job of lighting the road around the rider, but that's not a useful thing to do.
Light on the ground/below the horizon is for you to see where you're going.
Light to the front/back/side above the horizon is for other people to see you. And that problem is addressed by many other lights already (as well as being ignored by more still).
Projecting light onto the poorly reflecting ground, expecting that light to be more visible to others than light shining directly from the bike seems a rather pointless approach to me.
It is quite a good idea but as this will only work on dark roads is 400 lumens enough for a front beam? Not in my neck of the woods
The Saferide is apparently 400 lumen, and that's plenty for my very dark commute -if this guy is as good at optical design as claimed, it should be fine.
Mr Brass -you could just change your pledge to the buddy one?
I used to work with the inventor at Jaguar, Des Burns is a switched on Automotive lighting engineer. He knows what is possible with optics and LED's. He was headhunted in 2005, the luck bugger to work in the Australian Automotive Industry. I wish him well with this, lost contact with him years ago. Its looks good, really like the two independent beam concept, it offers us riders something new. I just bought one from the kickstarter site for only 37 pounds delivered to UK, pretty cheap for a 400 lumen rechargeable light. I wanted to buy another one, but kickstarter only allowed one pledge per account how stupid is that?
I often think the best way to ensure cars will be able to see you at night is to fix some sort of street light to your bike, lighting YOU not the road.
Just to be clear, I'm sure the thing is well intended and well designed. It just seems like yet another attempt to excuse incompetent or impaired drivers, and to shift the onus of dealing with the problems they cause onto the cyclists and away from where they should be fixed.
I worry that in the not distant future any cyclist failing to resemble a mobile lighthouse will be blamed for accidents, in the way anyone ot wearing a helmet and hivis is currently.
I think this looks absolutely brilliant - exactly what I need for my commute on a particularly dangerous unlit country road. I'm all for anything that improves my chances of survival. I'll be contributing.
I think the point is that usually you have a light at the front and back but the bit between is darkness. From the side this is the spot that frivers miss so illuminating the road beneath the rider highlights where they are. Bit like putting the rider in a spotlight.
Between the side illumination of a good headlight (for example, a Saferide) and the side illumination of my rz8 at the rear there's maybe 2 foot of unlighted bike. Anybody who can miss seeing me will probably miss any stimulus short of a poke with a sharp stick.
I'm puzzled. Any half decent bike light will 'light the road', but it looks as though this one does so extremely brightly, making it difficult to see anything beyond the pool of light. Which seems a good way to ride into things.
It's probably the footage itself, but similar lights are already on the market and cheaper. Don't see any point in this light