Cameras for safety & insurance

[flecc]

It'd useful to know if designing and making a fully enclosed cabin for bicycles, with side impact bars, is worth the effort. What injuries do cyclists get? Mangled legs, cracked skulls, shattered elbows? And in what proportion? Are cyclist injuries similar those of motorcylists, of which there may be more data?

My recent experience of hauling myself + bike + Bafang bbs01b 15A conversion kit with battery + trailer + cargo = 174kg up steep hills, tells me that a fully enclosed bicycle cabin minus my bodyweight is a technically plausible possibility. A cabin weighing about 80kg max really would be ok, I think - this was a complete unknown before I started heaving spring water to my garden from nearby hills. After years of this being something I occasionally thought about, I had a eureka moment this morning for a good design which should be largely easy to construct, and could go some way towards making cyclists as safe as car drivers in collisions. But would it be worth the effort, and would the cycling population at large be interested in buying such an object, or it's design plans to make their own? If nothing is patentable, I'll open source it.

I won't go into the details of my eureka moment or it's actual design, but here's an amusing rough sketch of it's general shape. The lighter green part which I've approximately filled in (not it's actual intended shape), may have to be plexiglass, which will be difficult and expensive to form or get made. Plus side impact bars to protect legs, plus another. It'll fit most bicycles.

Let's face it - it's got as much chance of being mass produced, as similar products Sinclair keep taking pre-orders for.

View attachment 48707

BMW did similar for moped riders with their C1 scooter. Enclosing frame, sidebars to protect the arms and seat belt holding the rider inside the safe space. Even a helmet wasn't necessary.

But the public won't spend extra on safety, so two years after it was introduced it had to be discontinued due to disappointing sales.

 

[richtea99]

BMW did similar for moped riders with their C1 scooter. Enclosing frame, sidebars to protect the arms and seat belt holding the rider inside the safe space. Even a helmet wasn't necessary.

But the public won't spend extra on safety, so two years after it was introduced it had to be discontinued due to disappointing sales.

In the UK you still have to wear a helmet on a C1*. That's one reason.
The other reasons were that it was heavy & slow, and really expensive even for a BMW (like their current electric CE 04 scooter, from £12,270!).

Not really aimed at mass production, these were more for your rich inner city dweller, not for Dave and Sue to commute to the factory Amazon warehouse on.

*On the Continent you don't. They're a bit more enlightened.

 

[flecc]

In the UK you still have to wear a helmet on a C1*. That's one reason.
The other reasons were that it was heavy & slow, and really expensive even for a BMW (like their current electric CE 04 scooter, from £12,270!).

Not really aimed at mass production, these were more for your rich inner city dweller, not for Dave and Sue to commute to the factory Amazon warehouse on.

*On the Continent you don't. They're a bit more enlightened.

The sales were disappointing everywhere, as always, the small UK market is an irrelevance, the more so by refusing to exempt from helmet wearing.

The performance was perfectly ok for it's intended purpose and the C1 200 with 33% faster acceleration and 70 mph top speed answered that objection anyway.

The real problem, as I said, was that the public won't pay extra for safety unless forced to. The majority take the cheapest option with everything, especially here as I often remark, knowing the price of everything but the value of nothing.
.

 

[Bogmonster666]

It'd useful to know if designing and making a fully enclosed cabin for bicycles, with side impact bars, is worth the effort. What injuries do cyclists get? Mangled legs, cracked skulls, shattered elbows? And in what proportion? Are cyclist injuries similar those of motorcylists, of which there may be more data?

My recent experience of hauling myself + bike + Bafang bbs01b 15A conversion kit with battery + trailer + cargo = 174kg up steep hills, tells me that a fully enclosed bicycle cabin minus my bodyweight is a technically plausible possibility. A cabin weighing about 80kg max really would be ok, I think - this was a complete unknown before I started heaving spring water to my garden from nearby hills. After years of this being something I occasionally thought about, I had a eureka moment this morning for a good design which should be largely easy to construct, and could go some way towards making cyclists as safe as car drivers in collisions. But would it be worth the effort, and would the cycling population at large be interested in buying such an object, or it's design plans to make their own? If nothing is patentable, I'll open source it.

I won't go into the details of my eureka moment or it's actual design, but here's an amusing rough sketch of it's general shape. The lighter green part which I've approximately filled in (not it's actual intended shape), may have to be plexiglass, which will be difficult and expensive to form or get made. Plus side impact bars to protect legs, plus another. It'll fit most bicycles.

Let's face it - it's got as much chance of being mass produced, as similar products Sinclair keep taking pre-orders for.

View attachment 48707

I'll buy one when you get it into production. Have you considered airbags? How about this for inspiration? https://hovding.com/

I have not spent much time looking at it but the airbag helmet is supposed to work quite well and is a triamph of engineering...now, imagine LIDARR and an airbag that encloses the whole bike and rider...

 

[guerney]

I'll buy one when you get it into production. Have you considered airbags?

The other idea was to have side impact bars containing airbags which deploy outwards... lighter than a full hard shell plus side impact bars, but no weather protection. The issue would be if they made one bouncy after colliding with a motor vehicle - who knows where one could bounce to or into next? "A" road pinball...

How about this for inspiration? https://hovding.com/

I like it! Better in cold countries - that would be uncomfortable to wear during our two weeks of summer... which is suddenly far too dry and long.

 

[guerney]

I'll buy one when you get it into production.

You've been added to my mailing list. The large curved windscreen/canopy will be the tricky bit - I'd use a pre-existing motorbike windscreen, but I don't want struts obscuring the view. I want as wide a view cyclists normally see.

It's all pie in the sky, like Sinclair's (or his scion's) recent creations, but one I have been thinking about for years.

 

[guerney]

I was excited to learn that there's a insta360 with a 1 inch Leica lens, and full manual controls... until I saw test video shot on a bike at night. Hardly any of the number plates are legible, and that's when they're parked! A moving vehicle appears at the end, but that number plate is not legible either. My search continues, but I think current sensor technology is crud for night cyclist needs. I don't Leica it

 

[sjpt]

I was excited to learn that there's a insta360 with a 1 inch Leica lens, and full manual controls... until I saw test video shot on a bike at night.

The trouble with test video shot is you don't know how well the maker set up the manual controls. Certainly the quality on that video is not good. It looks as if the focus is wrong; problem with wide aperture.

 

[Deno]

Any thoughts on the Drift Ghost XL, its one that caught my interest.

Ghost XL – Drift Innovation

Seem popular with Motorcyclists and mentions good low light performance but its hard to tell from youtube clips. Also has good battery life and ability to link multiple cameras together so that they sync and are controlled by a master camera.

Also the Cycliq cameras seem to have good performance but they are expensive.

 

[Nealh]

I have had two cyclic rears and both failed, I simply use cheap £20 ones now which use the same mounts as per the go pro's.

 

[matthewslack]

Ghost no image stabilisation. I talked to them before going GoPro. Matters if you want to make video, possibly doesn't if you just want evidence capture.

 

[guerney]

The trouble with test video shot is you don't know how well the maker set up the manual controls. Certainly the quality on that video is not good. It looks as if the focus is wrong; problem with wide aperture.

It's very likely set to auto. The insta360 max ISO is 3200 (vs GoPros 6400), and that's what that looks like to me. It's image stabilisation is quite confused in low light (like the GoPros), which doesn't help. Yes the aperture is wide - that sort of product no doubt works well in daylight. I'm certainly not shelling out £549 until I've seen someone use a very low shutter speed, highest ISO and underexposure - I'd be quite happy brightening nearly black video to reveal grainy number plates. For now, I guess vague stabs at identifying make, model and colour of offending vehicles will have to do.

 

[guerney]

Ghost no image stabilisation. I talked to them before going GoPro. Matters if you want to make video, possibly doesn't if you just want evidence capture.

How useful is video as evidence if the driver doesn't stop and his number plate isn't legible on the recording.

The Drift Ghost X doesn't look great either - this cyclist has somehow managed to create a night video recording almost completely devoid of cars, but number plates of even parked cars are not legible.

 

[flecc]

but number plates of even parked cars are not legible.

Of course they don't show number plates well, they are designed by people who drive cars.
.