Crowdfunding campaign launched for "World's Safest Bike"

Siiigh

OK .. So some accidents do involve rider error .. There are the idiots who run red lights and get taken out. Not sure how this will assist them.

There are the nimrods who swerve into traffic or change lanes without a visual check of what is going to run them over. Again, how does this bike help?

In short, idiots will be idiot and will get their idiot butts run over. This bike will not change that.

On the other side, of course, we have drivers. Last time I looked, they were supposed to give cyclists 1.5 metres laterally and they are supposed to be able to stop, at all times, in half the visible distance ahead of them. 

Correspondingly, if they hit anything (including cyclists), it is not the cyclist's fault. (Oh .. and the super bike will not save them anyway).

Lastly, I would have thought that the bike man in Lyon might have known about French law regarding culpability. In France, the driver is ALWAYS at fault. No 'ifs', no 'buts' no 'maybes'.

In the 20 years after that law was introduced, France experienced a 60% drop in fatalities.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/scotland-blog/2015/mar/27/hold-drive...

No evidence of rider error being the primary driver there and no superbike required.

Funny that!

Raleigh will be pissed when they realise he's rebadged the vektar

If only this Loon had spent the same amount of time devising a system for motors and their operators from crashing into shit, he'd be fucking rich beyond his wildest dreams.

The response is the scribbling of an absolute crackpot, a dangerous crackpot at that given his refusal to see how fucking wrong he is in his interpretation and ridiculously flawed idea/s

Is _everything_ 'crowd-funded' on a par with Harry and Paul's Dragon's Den pitch (the Kitten-Stomper, derailed only by their failure to realise that "people like kittens")?

  Or is it just cycling-related stuff that is always completely ridiculous?

Watching the parade of absurdities that come along with that 'crowd funding' label attached makes me wonder how capitalism ever managed to defeat the commies.

Seriously, my suspicion is that the role of 'entrepreneurial innovation' in capitalism is massively over-stressed.  Most decent developments are incremental, minor, unexciting, improvements from big, long-established corporations.  Most "entrepreneurial" ideas are completely stupid and a waste of everyone's time and energy.

The Advance Rider Assistance System is merely the prototype, the Advance Rider System Extreme will soon launch followed by the Stop Hitting Inanimate Things, and Cycle Unimpeded Neo Transmodifier...

Sad thing is he already has two backers which pushes him to $676. Maybe he got his wife and a friend to pledge money to his crusade.

I predict he wont get anywhere near his asking amount. As good as his intentions are, its just a stupid idea and a complete waste of money and resources. 

He's not getting any money from me until he starts producing something like this:

As far as I can see, his response indicates that nothing he does / no special smart bike will be good enough: he appears to believe that cyclists are mainly at fault because they exist 

I clicked on the first link in that response and it attributes more single contributory factors to motorists, not cyclists (where contributory factors can be categorised in that manner).

If he has used that report as evidence for him arriving at a 90% cyclist cause, he has either misunderstood it, or is wilfully misrepresenting it.

Eiher way, he needs to stop this shit.

Wow, if that's the limit of his 'clever' then the technology on this bike is going to be awesome!

it sounds like stockholm syndrome or something in that field... He does everything right whilst out  cycling but a twat in a car still hits him so he instantly blames himself and other cyclists for accidents caused between cyclists and other road vehicles...

Heres the CEO's response.

Quote:

Sorry you feel this way. I apologize for the 90% rider error explanation as it was incomplete. We regret saying it that way now as it has offended many riders. What we meant by it is that after studying cycling accidents and nearly every study done over the past five years is that what we found was that the rider was directly or indirectly responsible for the accident in 90% of the situations. Directly, he or she made a mistake and caused it. Indirectly, he or she was in the wrong position on the road resulting in the driver running into him or her. Of course, there are the 10% where the driver just hit the rider because he or she just didn't see the rider or was impaired for some other reason. . Unfortunately, the governments around the world along with the cycling industry have done little to study this problem compared to the automotive sector where they have spent millions on it. While there are dozens of studies here are the links to two of the most definitive studies done in the world on cycling accidents...

http://www.worthingrevolutions.org.uk/sites/worthingrevolutions.org.uk/f... https://ntl.bts.gov/lib/25000/25400/25439/DOT-HS-803-315.pdf https://www.ems.gov/pdf/HS810793.pdf

I personally was hit by a car in 2011 as I was just leaving a round about I road through hundreds of times. I saw the car coming from the right 50-100 meters, but thought it would slow and stop for me as I clearly had the right-away. When I realize he wasn't going to stop it was too late to do anything about it and he hit me broadside. Fortunately, it was a unique car and I was spared any serious injury due to the type of impact profile on the front of it. If I would have been able to calculate the speed and distance of the car from me, I would have realized it was going to be impossible for him to stop before he hit me.

Only advanced technology could have done that for me. That is why we decided to look at what has been done in the automotive and motorcycle sectors and apply the same technology to cycling. If you do your homework, you will see this technology has reduced accidents from 45 - 75% in cars where the automatic braking comes on and stops the accident? Why? Because you only have 2-3 seconds in most accident situations to do everything to minimize or prevent an accident from happening. The first several steps must be done in less than half a second in order to slow or stop before hitting the object or other vehicle.

 

If everyone who has responded below spent 3-5 years and did their homework to study cycling accidents, the ways we could prevent these besides being more alert on the road you would have come up with the same solution. This is now what companies like Continental are bringing to the motorcycle market after years of R&D by them.

https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Two-Wheeler/Safe-Mobility/A...

 

Garmin has entered this market in 2015 with the acquisition of Backtracker to try to do the same too.

 

http://newsroom.garmin.com/press-release/fitness/garmin-acquires-assets-...

 

In summary, I don't mind your comments or the rest of the comments by Cyclopath, RoseofHizaki, John Brown and Bazk including the tone, accusations name calling. After 35 years of working with early and expansion stage technology companies these types of responses are par for the course. As CEO it's my job to respond in a professional manner and try to address everyone's issues.

 

Cycling fatalities and injuries are growing especially with the rise of e-bikes due to higher speeds. What we are doing may be laughed at and ridiculed by many people. But, in the end, it's an imperfect world where everyone makes mistakes and without assistance from advanced technology, we won't be able to correct these mistakes in time to reduce injuries or fatalities. Yes, you can go out and continue to ride and think you will never have an accident. But, if you are riding in any urban area with heavy traffic the odds are you will have 4-6 accidents in your cycling lifetime.

Took me a while to realise there's actually a bike underneath all that lot!

Let me put it this way... If it doesn't come with belt fed mounted machine guns and an RPG or TOW launcher. It is definitely not the safest bike in the world you'll still be killed cycling through south afrika on this bike by people with machetes, AK's and RPGs.

Not to mention the local wildlife that will probably jump out and leave with you with a nasty scratch

Lol. That is all.

The out of touch CEO does respond to the 90% claim in the  youtube comments but TL;DR, I'm not wasting more time on this crap.

Simon, please improve the content, I'm becoming less and less likely to come back to the site based on most recent content, too many near miss videos, weak content& more commercial postings. 

Just put 'world's safest bike' into google images and this is it boys. Get saving for the disc version.

I love the idea of brake by wire, so that when your battery's gone, you're gone.....

Of course,the cable that connects my brake levers to my brakes is, technically a wire, but let's not be pedants.

Crowdsourcing is either a very good thing or a very hi-tech way of separating fools from their money. In this case....

The brake by wire might be useful for handcycles, as it can reduce the amount of bloody inners and outers we go through from it being on our cranks - not sure if I'd wanna trust it, though...

April 1st is a while off, did he suffer a head injury whilst wearing a plastic hat and think do you know what, im gonna build a bike that will deflect a 42ton HGV from its path, it'll work just like my hat did to save my life.
Retarded shit and I hope it goes tits up!

I've never cycled in Lee Own, France before.

What intrigues me is the 3 things we need to do to avoid an accident.

1. Understand what's going on around us?

I have a pretty good idea; speeding, using a mobile, defending 'their' space, aggression, entitlement. Not sure how understanding this will help. To narrow it down though, I think video man wants me to think that having a radar will be useful. Given the metres per second a car travels at and the fact that the radar won't anticipate contact til it's too late then that ain't much use.

2. What to do and when

Well, if a car is approaching at high speed from behind and hits me, the usual approach is to fly into the air with my ligaments and tendons attempting to keep the bones together. Left hooked by a lorry, try and defy the laws of physics. Oh, the nice man thinks braking might help, pretty sure they have these on cars, it's the other pedal causing most of the problems.

3. Which controls to actuate

You're making that sound complicated, like applying the brakes or steering to avoid something isn't second nature. Unless he means the control to hover or become a non solid form temporarily, that button would be fucking cool!

There should have been a number 4:

4. Buying this bike will stop all future cycling accidents, cause there's no way you'd be seen dead on it... I mean be seen on it. Ride it.

Shite that beer must have been good, I missed Christmas, January, February and March...

Is the music stand there to take your 2 front teeth out?