Whenever Dragons’ Den gets a pitch for a cycling product I wince. Partly, that’s just my general reaction to hearing that any bit of the non-specialist media is looking at cycling, but the dragons have a terrible record when it comes to cycling. That they gave a warm reception to a handlebar-mounted indicators a couple of nights ago is just their latest inexplicable reaction to a cycling idea.
Nick Jenkins offered £45,000 for 15% of CYCL, the company behind Winglights indicators, and was negotiated down to 12.5%. A good day for the two young entrepreneurs behind the product, then.
The dragons debated whether indicators on the ends of the handlebars could be seen easily enough to be useful, but acknowledged that Luca Amaduzzi and Agostino Stilli had done a great job of the design and polish.
The problem is, a product can be as beautifully designed and made as the Venus de Milo, but it won’t succeed unless there’s a demand for it.
The history of indicators for bikes suggests there really is no demand.
Luca Amaduzzi and Agostino Stilli pitch at the dragons (Screenshot from BBC Dragons' Den)
Back in 2009 we reviewed Bicygnals, which put indicators on both the front and rear of your bike. We weren’t impressed and since then the product has vanished without trace. We also looked at Winkku that year, which combined an indicator with a mirror. It’s also long gone.
Then there was Spooklight, which provided indicators and a brake like triggered by an accelerometer. Shaun Audane called it “little more than a gimmick for the ipod age”.
But indicators for cycling just keep popping up. In 2013 we reviewed Scute Design Lumin8a gloves. We were even quite kind about them. Scute Design folded in 2015.
Lumin8a Indicating Gloves - where are they now?
At least there’s now a sure-fire way of finding out if anyone’s interested in your product before you commit to production. Last year a Canadian team took to Kickstarter to try and raise CA$8,000 for a SIX, a gesture-controlled indicator that also incorporated a brake light. They barely reached a third of their target.
The most recent attempt to get an indicator system off the ground prompted lively debate from our readers. London cabbie Gary Thatcher came up with the Signum wrist-mounted indicator. His Kickstarter campaign raised just £1,306 of the £20,000 goal.
The only indicators to get any traction are built into ‘innovative’ helmet designs. Even then, they often don't make it past the sketch stage. For some reason the judges of design competitions like to give them awards anyway. One indicator helmet, Lumos, managed a successful Kickstarter and appears to be shipping. Call us cynical, but we give it a year.
And while you’re putting batteries and lights and electronics into a helmet, why not go hog wild and have it play music, read out your text messages and send out an emergency alert if you crash. If you can’t live without all that, you can get a Livall BH60 from Amazon for £104.
Livall Bling BH60 complete with Flaschenblinkenlights
As Al Storer pointed out in the comments of our story on Signum, there have been loads of indicator systems — we’ve barely scratched the surface with the ones we’ve mentioned here — but they all have one thing in common: you never see them in the wild.
Either people don’t buy indicators, or if they do they don’t use them for long. They’re the sort of thing a well-meaning relative buys you for Christmas, not realising that keeping them to hand and charged is a faff that’s hard to justify for the function.
The inventors of indicator systems almost always say they’re trying to make cyclists safer, but they’re solving the wrong problem. The assumption is that drivers hit cyclists because we can’t be seen. But the majority of crashes involving cyclists happen because the driver simply didn’t look, and adding small flashing orange lights is going to make, at best, a tiny, tiny difference.
As Deborah Meaden pointed out on the show, an indicator is just another flashing light, and it’s one drivers aren’t expecting to see on a bike. However, it’s not clear that the Highway Code makes hand signals mandatory even if you have indicators, as many people think. The code describes how indicators and hand signals must be used, but doesn’t say who should use them.
Meaden might have been sensible to pooh-pooh the Winglights, given the repeated failure of indicators over the years, but the dragons don’t have a great track record when it comes to rejecting cycling ideas.
The dragons turned down Tom de Pelet’s Hornit
At least three ideas pitched at the dragons have gone on to success despite being rejected.
Probably the biggest missed opportunity was Tom de Pelet’s Hornit, a 140 decibel bike horn. In an episode screened in 2015, but filmed ten months earlier, the dragons declined to back the Hornit. Between the pitch and the show going to air, Tom had sold half a million quid’s worth of Hornits, and reckoned he was on course for £1.2 million in sales that year.
Later in 2015 sisters Sky and Kia Ballantyne, aged 12 and 14 respectively, pitched Crikey Bikey, a harness that makes it easier to support a toddler who’s learning to ride a bike.
The dragons turned them down even though they’d had orders from Evans Cycles and Mountain Warehouse. Their appearance on Dragon’s Den prompted a flood of new orders and the gadget is now stocked by Halfords.
Sometimes the dragons just don’t get the joke. They turned down Fat Lad At The Back (FLAB) clothing in 2014 because they didn’t like the name. But if you’re a non-svelte cyclist you get used to not taking yourself too seriously, and FLAB’s clothing struck a chord with riders don’t fit in Italian Lycra.
Later in 2014 Evans Cycles took on FLAB clothing, along with then-new sister brand Fat Lass At the Back.
All of that said, Nick Jenkins may be backing a long shot with the CYCL WingLights, but Amaduzzi and Stilli are clearly promising talents.
Jenkins and all the dragons were impressed that the duo had already got the product out into the market and broken even. The standard of finish impressed even notorious cyclophobe Peter Jones who said: “The quality and the way you’ve put this together, I think is as good as I have ever seen in a product.”
I'm looking forward to seeing what they do next.
Add new comment
91 comments
nowhere does it say that it was "found to be a contributing factor" - the report clearly says "attributed" in the 10% figure (p.34) - elsewhere it mentions both dark clothing and no lights together (p.23) - and in the conclusion it points to this being a factor on rural roads (p.45) and recommends promotion of both the use of lights and clothing...
so, unlike the report itself, you've taken one variable out of context and turned it into a definitively causal factor
You are the one citing it in support, why don't you read it and explain it? It shouldn't be that hard to give the gist of the argument, i.e. how they arrived at the conclusion and how they allowed for other possible explanations of the data.
I went to download it and decided I didn't feel like giving them all my personal details to be able to see it...I'm assuming they then do let anyone download it rather than then insisting you have to have some professional justification for doing so?
Maybe I'll give it a go at some point. But in the meantime, you are the one citing it in support so seems to me the onus is on you to explain what it says, given they don't just put it up for anyone to read.
It might be convincing and sound, but in the absence of a clear outline of the paper, I don't feel inclined to take the TRL's conclusions on faith. It is, after all, now a private think-tank for-hire, owned by 'members of the transport industry'.
Seems to me that set up might tend to produce reports saying what those paying for the reports want to hear. So the methodology is pretty important.
But didn't you comment/elaborate about how you thought they meant it?
more likely the sort who need a report to tell them that it's a bad idea to ride an unlit bicycle around country lanes in the middle of the night
A bit different, they didn't define 'dark clothing' in the report but they did clearly describe their method.
I've provided you with a link to a free full text copy of the report.
I'm not going to read it to you word for word because you can't figure out how to download it anonymously.
I've provided the evidence, the onus is on you to read it before drawing conclusions.
Not at all.
Table 7 on page 23 clearly show dark clothes at night to be a contributing factor in 10% of fatal collisions.
It is a separate contributory factor to lights.
The word attributed is used to describe whether the contributory factor was on the part of the cyclist or motorist.
I really don't think this can be described as weak or incomplete. It covers a huge numbers of fatal collisions and has examined most if not all of the available data.
Data of this type will always be subjective, there is no way to produce objective data about these sorts of collision.
Finally it's not a leap in the dark to suggest that removing a reported contributing factor could reduce the incidence of fatal collisions.
It's a logical response.
I might be going round in circles here, but my point all along has been how logical that response is.
Am I right in that the problem here is the contributing factor - dark clothing?
If so, a lot hinges on the term 'dark clothing', how they've arrived at that definition and what the basis for including deaths under that label is. But then they don't explain how they've done that? (This is where I think ClubSmeds was going)
So how do you fix a problem as defined by a bunch of other people if they haven't told you what the label that they've given the problem actually means?
If we don't know what it means, how do we remove 'dark clothing' here? (I think this is where Beezus was going. ) Do they mean just unlit clothing? Do they merely mean that the cyclist was in the dark? Are they just saying that it was dark or is the problem with the actual clothing? Types of garment? Clothing brands? Does hair colour make a difference? Do peds suffer the same casualty rates? You see what large effects a subtle difference in the label could have?
Next, are reflectives demonstrably the antidote, as opposed to 'light clothing' or just nakedness or a Ronald Macdonald outfit or a portable, head-mounted spotlight? How effective are they? Should cyclists be advised to avoid cycling in the dark if their clothes make drivers hit them? What might the unintended consequences be of applying the suggested fix? Is there a wider problem with drivers not driving to the conditions on unlit roads or elsewhere (I think this is where ktache was regarding shit driving and you were regarding factors beyond your control)?
(I'm not actually being obtuse here - I spent a long time working in performance improvement and the same mistakes regarding 'fixing problems' happen repeatedly, and one of the most common is a lack of understanding and agreement as to what the problem is in the first place. And complex problems are never fixed via 'common sense'. I hear your Swiss Cheese model, but you need some confidence that the slices address the factors, and I lack confidence that they've been defined correctly here.
TL;DR:
1. Can we demonstrate what' dark clothing' means?
2. Can we be confident that those figures were categorised accurately?
3. Can we demonstrate that reflectives address the issue of 'dark clothing'?
Isn't this' no' on all counts?
1. We can't know definitely what they meant by dark clothing.
It would be reasonable to say that high-vis clothing would be very unlikely to be classified as dark.
In certain lights reflective clothing can appear as dark so there may be a few cases where reflective clothing has been recorded as dark.
Realistically though I would expect almost all people to be able to identity dark clothing correctly.
Overall I think it is perfectly reasonable therefore to assume that dark clothing means just that in the vast majority of cases they've recorded.
2. I have quite a lot of confidence in these figures, they seem to have been very methodically gathered and seem to tally with real world experience.
The fact that they report a high incidence of death at junctions tallies with what I read about on an all too regular basis.
The fact that they found that car drivers were inattentive and drove at excessive speeds mirrors exactly what I experience on an almost daily basis.
3. There is no definite proof of this, it therefore becomes a personal choice. In low light conditions reflective gear is the brightest stuff you can wear, if dark clothing is a problem then it seems sensible to wear the brightest clothing you can.
You're never going to get scientific level proof in these sort of studies, I think this research is about as good as you can get given the data available.
1. table 7-4 is on page 34
2. it is treated as separate on that table, but this is qualified in the text
3. it also clearly explains that "attributed" refers to the attending police officers' judgments
This is the exact point we've all been making to you from the beginning
No I have no better data, there is unlikely to be any better data. But data based on subjective opinions is unreliable and therefore all of the conclusions drawn from it are unreliable. The statement that the report uses STATS19 data effectively invalidates it. This really is pretty basic scientific or statistical method.
In the absence of "better data" you effectively have no data and no usable data yet insist on defending your unsubstatiated position regarding this report.
And the investigating officer, who has driven there, who has probably not ridden a bicycle since they were a child, if that (excellent WMP excepted) and who has only heard the justification of the motorist....
If you accept this is the best data available but reject it then you have to accept that there is no reliable data proving drivers are at fault in the vast majority of fatal collisions.
That is what this data shows, everyone on this thread is desperate to discount the data, I doubt they're so keen to stop blaming drivers for fatal collisions.
Your call.
Which is why the motorist was found to have been the contributing factor in the vast majority of fatal collisions?
The tribalism on here is pathetic.
1. table 7-4 is on page 34
2. it is treated as separate on that table, but this is qualified in the text
3. it also clearly explains that "attributed" refers to the attending police officers' judgments
This is the exact point we've all been making to you from the beginning
[/quote]
So reject this research and all of its findings. That means you can no longer blame drivers for fatal collisions. After all in the vast majority of cases the evidence is subjective.
Who else is going to attributed contributing factors?
It's the best data set available, it backs up the arguments that cyclists have been making for years, if you reject it you have to reject all of it, it's all just as subjective.
Firstly, I am neither accepting nor rejecting this data - simply correcting your phrasing when you portray this statistical data as scientific fact.
Secondly, I think it is also a bit simplistic to blame drivers for fatal collisions - they are not the ones manufacturing overpowered fuel-hungry vehicles or facilitating their use in inappropriate road conditions, nor are they responsible for the upkeep of the roads, provision of infrastructure, or the enforcement and setencing of offenders.
Thirdly, this data clearly reflects the perceptions and biases of the police and society in general, particularly in placing the onus on the individual in circumstances where it is very obvious that the wider conditions play a far bigger part than the actions of any single participant. The report itself makes that very clear.
And yet, given that 2 of us die each week through the fault of people in more comfortable and safe, and very polluting, metal boxes, and the transport secretary doors a cyclist and then attempts to blame the cyclist, that tribalism is probably justifiable, indeed necessary.
We have to be fair and balanced now???
I saw someone wearing a Lumos helmet the other week in Cambridge. Followed him through several junctions. It wasn't until the third junction that I actually clocked the indicators. Either he wasn't using them, or they're not actually that visible, especially if the red lights are flashing as well.
He was also using arm signals.
How is tribalism working out for us so far?
Research like this can be used to argue for safer junctions, improvement in HGV cabs, better segregated routes to schools and many, many other things that most cyclists care deeply about.
If we needlessly attack this sort of research we are doing the work of the car lobby for them.
Show me one post that 'needlessly attacks' the research. I see repeated questioning of its methodology and the logic of the conclusions you're drawing, but no needless attacks.
As for tribalism, what sort of person argues for safer junctions and many, many other things? Well, as someone who does that locally, and knows others who do the same, I know it's the type of single-minded, thick-skinned person who is mightily pissed off with society's car worship and acceptance of cyclists' deaths and who posts on threads like this one.
The Netherlands didn't get where they are with infrastructure by more people strapping on a reflective jacket, another light or a plastic lid. Stop de kindermoord! was just another tribal movement to begin with. How's that worked out?
I too have worked most of my life in process improvement which is why I too want change but am not willing to accept the "facts" without questioning them or the conclusions if made by leaps of faith.
So often I have encountered local improvements made be a department that has improved their money/time/quality position. On further investigation though the full end to end process has suffered greater though. Plugging a small hole at one point can cause a bigger hole to appear elsewhere unless causality is fully understood.
This is what has been suggested here. What if the excess use of reflective does make cyclists safer at night but because they are not as visible during the day they become less safe. Further more because, as the results of this study show, more cyclists ride during the day the fatalities increase as a result?
I'm not saying that visibility isn't an issue, I question whether the fix to that issue will cause other larger issues or not.
Attacking the research for being subjective is pointless and needless.
There is no way of doing this type of research objectively.
It relies on value judgements.
There is absolutely no way of knowing whether there will be knock on effects or not.
So we can either taken no action and avoid any unforseen circumstances or take action based on the best evidence we have available.
I think the latter is a more sensible approach.
What??! I don't follow this. Did you mean something else? Do you need a sit down or to improve your googling? Other research on different topics exists, as does impact analysis as a discipline. I don't want to appear condescending but as it reads, that statement is just false.
There is other research addressing the stuff that ClubSmeds has suggested as one area to look at. Even if there wasn't, it's possible for it to be commissioned. There's research that suggests that making cycling less convenient or appear more dangerous (use of safety equipment) has the effect of reducing numbers of people who cycle. That sort of thing.
But, in order to limit unintended consequences to begin with, the argument needs to be tied tightly to the research and the research itself needs to be tight, which is the cause for alarm here with the 'dark clothing is a factor in 10% of fatalities therefore reflectives' line of reasoning. Picking apart every word in that is second nature to the nerds who do this sort of thing for a living or, even weirder, a hobby.
it's amazing how many drivers moan about the ninja cyclists they see riding about clearly they do see them
no one is suggesting that pedestrians are similarly attired and yet we (rightly) expect drivers not to hit them
however given the choice between clothing with relectives and without (same performance same price) then I would always chose to have as there is no downside.
Of course there is with more research and better understanding.
To take your Swiss cheese analogy from earlier, you have one slice with holes in it and you think that by moving it slightly you can stop the lining up of a small hole with the next slice. What you're not doing is looking at the whole thing to make sure that by adjusting to remove that how your not making a larger hole line up.
I already provided a link to a research paper that showed the color of clothing at night to not be a factor, only reflectives. You then stated to interoperate"dark clothing" in a way that there was no evidence to support. That is dangerous assumption and could lead to serious Swiss cheese misalignment. We need to fully understand the current situation, the causes and their effects to the whole to ensure we are not exposed to a hole!
Exactly! The studies into"shared space" set ups have shown that is you make vulnerable uses more common and less predictable then they become safer as drivers are looking out for them better and therefore more aware.
I'm not saying that we need to go around at night dressed like ninjas, I'm also not sure that the Christmas tree stance is any more helpful though
Science has absolutely nothing to do with common sense.
Pages