In this video from Cariacica, Brazil, bus drivers sit on stationary bikes as a bus whizzes past. Why? To give the drivers a visceral sense of what it feels like when a 30,000 pound metal behemoth flies by less than two meters from your exposed body. The goal is to educate the drivers on why they should respect the mandatory 1.5 meter gap.
(Bicycling via Weird Universe) Read the rest “Watch this unusual way to teach bus drivers to be careful around bicyclists”
Road diets (previously) have been proven to reduce fatalities and unsafe speed incidents. Here's how it works. Read the rest “Great explainer on how bike-friendly road diets make everyone safer”
Bicyclists who also own motorcycles and motorscooters have come up with some clever ways to mount their human-powered two-wheeler on their motor-powered vehicles. Read the rest “How to make a bike rack for a motorcycle or scooter”
Win? Nah, it's more fun just to keep playing.
Read the rest “Child almost wins balance bike race but is having too much fun to care”
A new study of driver attitudes toward bikers shows that being able to perceive cyclists is influenced by driver attitudes toward cyclists. Those who don't like or don't care about cyclists don't see them even when looking at them. They also found that the social dominance of vehicles means they have a far higher degree of lethality over "alternative" transportation like biking or walking: Read the rest “Drivers who dislike cyclists don't see them”
DCA has been presenting their concept for Optic, an AR bike helmet at conferences and competitions this year. It includes cameras, sensors, and a clear visor that displays alerts about obstacles, directions, and other data.
Optic gives cyclists the visual information to make safer decisions on the road by integrating front and rear cameras with 360-degree proximity and collision detection. The visor doubles as a heads-up display where Optic live-streams the rear camera and highlights potential risks. This allows the user to focus on the road ahead with full awareness of their surroundings. The visor display can also show navigation and journey statistic interfaces, putting information directly in front of the cyclists without them having to take their eyes off the road.
• DCA Optic website Read the rest “Augmented reality bike helmet conceptual design”
This engineer, active in Kidderminster, England in the 1930s, appears to be the artistic ancestor of San Francisco's Cyclecide bike rodeo. (British Pathé via Weird Universe)
Read the rest “See this inventor's odd bicycles from the 1930s”
Amazon sells these cute heart-shaped bike lights for just $(removed), including shipping. Read the rest “Heart shaped bike light”
"One Got Fat" is a surreal bicycle safety film from 1963 where the gang of freewheeling bicycling kids in monkey masks suffer brutal fates, one by one. (Thanks, UPSO!)
Read the rest “One Got Fat: deeply weird bicycle safety film with kids in monkey masks”
Cycling Hipsters, if you were truly worth your ironic sideburns and artisanal grease stains, you'd abandon that fixie and mount one of these bad boys. The Smithsonian honors National Bike Month with a dive into the image archives for this photo, the forerunner of the modern bicycle: a draisine from around 1818. More about this "dandy horse," below. Read the rest “National Bike Month: Draisines are the new fixies”
On the Boing Boing Flickr Pool, Half My Dad's Age's beautiful action shot of a guerrilla planter perched atop a bicycle locking-stand on the streets of Toronto. I like the way this beautifies the lock-up without making it less useful to cyclists.
I hadn't seen the gorilla planters on the bike stands yet. They are cool idea. Heard about it one day on the CBC. Read the rest “Guerrilla planter on a bike-locking stand”
