Road safety: a bicycle that anticipates the trajectory of surrounding cars and honks the horn

Today's innovation will make more than one cyclist in the city dream.

You've found a bike that protects against collisions by anticipating the paths of other vehicles.

He even goes so far as to honk those who drive badly.

In addition, it is a big truck horn so that they realize that they are passing too close, that there is someone in their blind spot, or quite simply, that there is has a cyclist in front of them.

For this, the bike is equipped with sensors and radars.

They allow it to analyze the speeds and trajectories of all the vehicles present for around thirty meters around.

And if the algorithm determines that a crash is imminent, it blows the horn loudly to wake up distracted motorists.

Why a horn and not an alarm for the cyclist?

Or, outright, automatic avoidance?

Because on a bicycle it's much more complicated.

If it brakes or turns without warning, you can quickly become unbalanced and break your face.

Same thing for the alarm, you have to have a very fast reaction time to be able to respond.

So that everyone knows the horn.

If a motorist begins a maneuver and hears a horn, automatically, he will stop and apply the brake.

It's a reflex.

The approach is therefore very different from what has been done up to now.

Rather, we were trying to alert the cyclist.

From now on, we will speak directly to motorists so that they more notice the two wheels.

Is it a device you can buy?

Not yet. A prototype has just been presented by engineers at the University of Minnesota. They are in discussions with OEMs to sell the technology under license. Only problem, it will be expensive, around 500 euros. But at least we can no longer be ignored by motorists.