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news
The Dash wireless smart earphonesWould you wear the world's first wireless smart earphone?
The issue of headphones is a contentious one, with scientific studies finding listening to music adversely affects pedestrian safety. While polls suggest nine out of ten people back a headphone ban on bikes, some argue it is no worse a cyclist listening to music in motion than a motor vehicle driver doing so.
Whichever side of the fence you sit on, what could be the world's first wireless smart earphone is being developed, and it is also, apparently, a heart rate sensor, accelerometer, bluetooth device and music player.
The Dash, by tech company, Bragi, fits into the ear and is controlled by using a series of taps and holds on the outside of the device, via a high resolution optical touch sensor.
Its makers also claim that it can measure and record steps taken and distance travelled, heart rate and oxygen saturation levels, while providing "real time acoustic feedback of your progress". There's also a microphone in there.
Aftershokz Bluez 2 Wireless Bone Conduction Headphones
Nine in ten people back headphone ban for cyclists, says BBC survey
The dash doubles as a bluetooth device, and can pick up voice sound information via bone conduction technology, which exists in other headphones already.
The earphones weigh 14g, are water resistant up to 1m, and come in four sizes. Bragi claims they will stay in place while running. It will be possible to store 4GB of music on them, as well as streaming music from a phone.
The heart rate monitor works via tiny infrared sensors, which can detect blood oxygen saturation by shining LED red and infra red lights into the ear's skin capillaries and measuring differences in the lights' reflection.
The product is still in development but, once released, will come with an app suitable for iOS, Android and Windows. We're curious to know how they would stand up against some other wireless earphones we've tried.
Laura Laker is a freelance journalist with more than a decade’s experience covering cycling, walking and wheeling (and other means of transport). Beginning her career with road.cc, Laura has also written for national and specialist titles of all stripes. One part of the popular Streets Ahead podcast, she sometimes appears as a talking head on TV and radio, and in real life at conferences and festivals. She is also the author of Potholes and Pavements: a Bumpy Ride on Britain’s National Cycle Network.
Latest Comments
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The collision investigator needs a lesson in basic English. The bus driver COULD have seen the poor lad, not would have seen....
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She's He's not my Queen King and certainly has no ownership of our language!
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Also don't forget - Sustrans are a charity *....
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Yes ... but (just due to the large numbers of people affected) this likely would only proceed in the UK at a very ... cautious ... pace....
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Arsehole in the van not with standing, how did they manage to get a risk assessment allowing a race (a group not a TT) group to be competing on ...
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I think reviewer completely missed the point here trying to match bike's name with what it can do. Ribble is namin git's bike weirdly, the...
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Bit of googling gone wrong in the article - the JAT is the Junction Assessment Tool, the Joint Approval Team appears to be a coutner terrorism...
- HKR 7 hours 27 min ago
Can't believe that child threw his bike on the floor at the end of that. Young people today have no respect... ;))
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31 comments
I wear headphones when I ride to the gym as I'll be putting them on anyway
Sometimes I forget them or can't find them I've yet to find that there absence improves my safety, I take a route that the local council have marked on sustainable transport maps as a "quiet route" that joins a shared path regular hazards:
Drivers looking for that elusive parking spot near the train station oblivious to any other road user
Drivers rolling stop lines from side streets at speed
Drivers failing to look for anything much when entering roundabouts
Drivers passing close to get ahead at junctions / crossing refuges (yes i take the lane but some bad drivers are very innovative)
Crossing a 4 lane 60km/hr target speed road (live in Melbourne, Oz) with hidden dips to access shared use path on other side - nearest lights are 300m+ each way
Looking out for dog walkers cars reversing out across the shared used path
a mix of bad driving attitudes / bad driving habits and infrastructure that favours vehicles over cyclists and peds .........and me not using headphones makes the journey safer???
like helmets and high viz its an issue that should be way down the safety agenda plenty of other stuff to sort first - time to stop the "what cyclists must do to make themselves safe" crap
for some harder stats try
http://www.monash.edu.au/miri/research/reports/muarc322.pdf
a study of commuting cyclists in Canberra - around 90% of potentially dangerous interactions with vehicles where found to be due to driver behaviour with cyclists taking avoiding action, pretty sure this finding isn't unique
PS as to the product I use a blue tooth headset with buttons and love the ease of control adding HRM with out a chest strap to find sounds good to me
It is no comparrsion to compare to vehicle drivers listening to music whilst driving. A cyclist is not encased in metal and mistakes tend to hurt more.
As a cyclist you are a vunlerable road user and you need all your senses to help stay safe. I don't think riding with some types of earphones can be that bad, but I would not do it myself. Its easy to get caught out with wind noise and not hearing a car coming up behind you, adding music can't help in any way.
I like the device, just not for riding a bike.
It's a personal choice whether to listen to music on a bike, but I think you're exaggerating the danger. You're implying that deaf people shouldn't cycle on the roads due to the danger and their lack of hearing whereas I don't think it's that perilous. The biggest advantage of being able to hear cars is that you can be aware of cars behind you without having to look, but a deaf person would want to be looking before performing a maneouvre on the road anyway, so I don't see much drawback.
Here's a couple of interesting articles about deaf cyclists: http://www.ndcs.org.uk/family_support/positive_parenting_families/parent...
http://limpingchicken.com/2013/11/21/the-question-deaf-cyclist/
I believe in cycling as an inclusive activity, so we should try to encourage everyone to cycle within their abilities and not scare them off with opinions about danger.
I thought I was being pretty mild and for the record I haven't made any reference to deaf people. Until its a law it is personal choice but any thingthat distracts you can't help. I know, as a teenager I did it all the time, but out on the roads 30 years on I wouldn't even think about doing it. Too many idiots are driving and back then I was naive.
Of course people with hearing can cycle, just like they drive and do lots of other things like any other person, but you are at a disadvantage and the same goes with headphones, especially in ear sound reducing models which are very popular. Agree to disagree but I'm not changing my opinion that has been formed from 40 years of riding a bike.
Fair enough, I appreciate that I'm the one comparing hearing people using headphones to deaf people, but I think it's worth remembering that they're not necessarily at a disadvantage: http://www.cyclo.co.uk/2014/06/deaf-cycling-tom-smith-interview/
Cost me 120€ cycling in Spain with headphones. Seems to be legal in many other countries though.
I still used them while mountain biking for a while, but now I find it more relaxing to just listen to my bike and the forrest.
I like to see more integrations with clothing and heart rate monitors. The belts and wrist bands can't be the only solution.
On a tangent, this is what really irritates me about bells. The implication here is that once the bell has been rung, the pedestrian should get out of the way in order to allow the cyclist to get past withouit having to slow down..... NO! you ring the bell to make the pedestrian aware AND slow down AND pass carefully. You should always pass pedestrians at a safe speed!!!! Grrr!
As for headphones being a bad idea, I tend to agree because I have often come behind joggers with headphones who are oblivious to my presence in spite of slowing down and shouting. You're simply cutting down on one of your senses and without upping the use of another (constantly looking behind or using rear view mirror in the case of motorised vehicles) you're always going to be at a disadvantage.
I do, however, like the idea of wireless headphones as a tool for removing cables from the bike when on the rollers. Not sure I'm looking for yet another platform that'll take my pulse.
The times when I have to use my bell are usually when the ped is in the middle of the path and blocking my easy passing, so the bell use is just to get them to move over enough for me to go past. I invariably DO slow down for passing peds as I'm aware that shared paths aren't the right place for speed and I try not to use paths when I'm going quicker than 15mph (there used to be a recommendation about that) or so. I use the roads when I want to go as quick as I can; shared paths are just that - shared.
To remain safe one needs to remember that people's behaviour is random, and that requires that one always assumes the worst possible outcome. Any deviation from this is a gamble, which may pass without issue, or result in an accident. This is true of travel on, or in, any vehicle, and of life in general.
It also affects the safety of those who pedestrians collide with as a result of being distracted .
I had a headphone-wearing jogger run into my path as I cycled to work, I collided with said jogger, hit a traffic sign and ended up in hospital with a shattered tibia. Two operations and two weeks later, I'm now wearing a frame to pin my leg together for up to 6 months, followed by subsequent months learning to walk again.
Not surprisingly, my take on pedestrians and cyclists wearing headphones listening to music is that they're a menace to their and others safety.
If the ped I collided with hadn't been wearing headphones and listening to music at volume, she might have heard my bell riinging and me shouting a warning for her to watch out.
may I be as bold as to suggest that you could have avoided this collision by slowing down and giving the jogger wide berth and anticipating a change in direction. After all you seemed to have time to ring your bell and shout. We expect motorists to give us space and ease up on their speed when passing, should we not offer pedestrians the same considerations?
Fair point. I was making a turn so I'd already slowed down and the width of the road didn't allow sufficient room for giving a sufficiently wide berth to avoid the collision. The whole thing happened in the space of 5 seconds at most.
That's exactly what I thought when I read that.
I cycle and find that having a truck revving and applying the hydraulic brakes less than 15 meters behind me can be quite intimidating so headphones actually dulls this. They have no effect on my commutes what so ever. I don't use them when cycling in groups as everyone tends to be pretty vocal.
If they were to make headphones illegal on bicycles they would have to rip car stereos out of cars, ban the closure of car windows so that drivers could hear the traffic around them, ban deaf people from cycling, ban pedestrians from using headphones and boom boxes (back to the 80's yeah). It's unworkable.
I'm sorry you got injured. I often pass joggers on a shared path/pavement (one without a clear dividing line although that shouldn't make much difference) and a lot of them are oblivious to other pavement users and don't hear a bike bell. When they don't hear my bell, it's really annoying as I have to slow down to a safe speed and then try to get past them safely. Luckily most joggers keep to a relatively straight line so it's not too difficult.
I have to keep reminding myself that peds have priority even on shared use paths and even though they aren't paying attention to their surroundings, they don't deserve to get hit by me on a bike. The vast majority of them aren't a problem and they certainly don't endanger me - just slow me down.
I'm puzzled as to whether your incident happened on the pavement or the road?
A valid point (although vans tend to be diesel and quite noisy) but I agree with Daveyraveygravey. When you're out on the roads mixing with traffic, the only things that should be on your mind are your BIKE and CONCENTRATING on your surroundings.
Anything else is a dangerous distraction.
Are they working on an accompanying cycling blindfold also
All black cloting and no lights at night, plus restricting hearing sense, it seems like a blindfold is the next logical accessory for your fashionable kamikaze cyclist. Maybe all those buit-in sensors are used for recording time of death.
Has anyone esle seen the interview with Rachel Atherton about the horrendous crash she had with a van that totally destroyed her road bike and badly injured her?
"There I was, pinning it down the road, head down, listening to AC/DC..."
Presumably why you didn't hear the van you collided with then
?
Music? No thanks, I'll stick with the wind and the birds tweeting.
Head on collision. More an eyes thing than an ears thing, surely?
"No worse" may be an understatement - distracted car drivers kill people other than the occupants most days of the week. 13 hospitalised in today's story, below.
Car crashes into Porthcawl nightclub smoking area (bbc)
There's nothing to suggest that the Portcawl driver was distracted by music. In general, it's debatable whether music distracts drivers and it looks like the choice of music can either help or hinder your driving: http://www.spring.org.uk/2013/08/music-in-the-car-does-it-enhance-or-dis...
It looks like rock music is the most dangerous driving music: http://www.confused.com/car-insurance/articles/top-ten-most-dangerous-dr...
Good points well reasoned, Hawk!
On the safety tip, I believe these have a "passthrough" mode where they will play outside sounds as well as your music, so still more distracting than no music, but they shouldn't stop you from hearing what's going on outside.
In places with real infrastructure this is all a complete non-issue.
no way when out on my bike even my phone gets turned off...
I've only worn headphones on short bike journeys where I know the junctions and what to expect. On bikes, you get to pick up a lot of extra information about what's behind you by using your ears, but it's not essential. The Highway Code doesn't (as far as I know) specify any minimum level of hearing and I believe it's perfectly legal for deaf people to drive cars and ride bikes so I don't have any problem with people who want to listen to music.
I'd prefer these if they were over-the ear headphones as those little bud earphones get really uncomfortable.
Interesting.
Nice to see a Windows Phone app too
I'd use this. I ride with one earbud in my left ear. Sometimes listening to music, sometimes not. I use the ear bud to block the wind in that ear. Numerous perforations and infections mean leaving open to the wind causes ear ache. A little gadet like this would would not only help stop the wind but have more of a function too. Sounds good to me.
I have a pair of Sennheiser IE80s for cycling - they make me safer as I have to actually LOOK more and not rely on hearing.
Even just thinking that makes you less safe. When you're on the road, whether cycling driving or just walking, do not be smug, and think you are safe because of this or that; you need to keep working at it, keep assessing What is going on around you. Don't get complacent.
I love music and I love cycling, but I think you should concentrate on one or the other. Regardless of what you can and can't hear behind you, and regardless of whether that helps or not, I choose not to listen to music when on my bike. I believe music would be a distraction and is more likely to be a problem than not.
Fine - if you find that music distracts you then by all means don't listen to it. As someone who has listened to the radio/music on my bike from age 13-57 and not found it a problem I am at liberty to continue with my harmless enjoyment as I also do in my car.
I also listen to music while out walking and find it most enjoyable and have had not so much as a near miss - only the cyclist haters want it banned.
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