pscyclo4130

Hi there,

Has anyone seen or tried this?

https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/into...rod518151.html

BTW, I do not work for Garmin but am looking into getting another one... =)

JonnyHK 

DC Rainmaker has a good write up (as always).
Hands on with Garmin?s new Varia bike radar and smart light system | DC Rainmaker

Might not be so useful around a busy town, but on a quiet open road it would help prevent you being caught unawares.

Looigi

I'd prefer to look into a mirror than bar mounted indicator lights. The mirror conveys much more info, like what's approaching, how wide it is, it's lateral position, if there are multiple vehicles, etc.. That said, one doesn't preclude the other.

Matariki

I agree. Mirrors are very effective at telling me what I need to know. The device is interesting but I can't see it as useful for my commuting in an urban setting. 1) there are always cars behind me. 2) it doesn't really tell me anything about risk, i.e. is the vehicle going to simply pass like the others or is it going to plow into me? 3) it may actually add another distraction to interfere with situational awareness.

It's gimmicky and electronic, so it should sell well. The bottom line for me is that it is yet another device to extract money from folks who can't pay enough attention on the road.

ItsJustMe

On a quiet, open road, it's basically impossible to be caught unawares unless you're deaf. I can hear cars coming at least 1/4 mile away and that's in a thunderstorm. In normal weather, 1/2 mile.

genec

Don't know so much about the whole radar thing, but I sure like the idea of a light that changes flash pattern, frequency and even brilliance as cars approach. Imagine a PB super flash et. al. with "intelligence."

CrankyOne

Seems more gimmick than practical to me. I'd much prefer to have a good rear-view camera. Than again, almost all of my riding is on side paths now where I don't need anything like these.

howsteepisit

Remember when riding a bike was a pure and pleasurable experience. Now we see back looking radar, forward looking hazard detectors, front and rear video cameras, helmets, self inflating head-protection air bags, steady and blinking daytime running lights. There are also untold performance monitoring devices, smart phone tracking apps, speed bragging internet sites, and the list goes on and on.

Seems like its just getting stupid scared in the bicycling community.

CrankyOne

Americans love to complicate things. Life is much better since we began riding upright Dutch bikes and ditched all of the complications you mentioned.

For the fear mongering set, perhaps riding in one of these would help:

JonnyHK 

True, but after a bunch of long lonely miles you won't have checked that mirror for a while and a prompt to do so will be just what you need.


Not everyone has perfect hearing and the conditions are not always perfect.

Give yourself a bit of a head wind, a coarse chip road surface, and make yourself tired after 2-3 hours on the road...that car doing 100kph/60mph will sneak up on you just fine.

walrus1

I suspect if I put this on my bike in NYC I'd rip it off a block or two later. If you don't wear earbuds and look back every once awhile you'll rarely be taken by surprise.

Robert C

As far as fun gadgets go, It looks good. I will wait until it is integrated with the camera to think about it.

As others have pointed out, it is no "safety must have" however, as a gadget, it looks good, particularly on a velomobile.

jgadamski

Concur. This is not to say that there exists a serious gap between cyclists and motor vehicle operators regarding presumed primacy of modes. In other words, share the road is an ideal, not anywhere close to reality.
Micheal Moore, in 'Bowling for Columbine' identified the marketable commodity of fear and its effect on our daily lives. This is validation of his views. Don't try to sell me a $200 gadget that becomes part of my fear index. My head turns, my ears and eyes work. My brain is pretty good at helping me maintain safe operation. All for the price of good nutrition and exercise.

TinyL

That ended when texting was invented. I am looking hard at this dang device. I have poor hearing and severe tinnitus. My routes are very limited to my work. Either a shoulder on a 75 mph highway (don't think device would matter as too much traffic) or a narrow old two lane 60 mph road with no shoulder. The four lane divided highway shoulder route is used by most cyclists in the area because of the rumble strips on the edge. Shoulder is about 10 feet wide. But I felt that buy the time I heard the car I would be toast as most drive it at 80 mph. I have mirrors...but cannot pay attention to them 100 % of the time.

I switched to the small road after hearing the cars on the rumble strips to many times behind me...scary how many people still text and drive. I feel at least my odds are better on the two lane since its mostly grassy dirt off to the sides to dive into if necessary. People tend to do the speed limit there also because of how narrow it is. I would have probably pulled the trigger on the Garmin Radar if it had a loud audible signal as well...still might.

Can't stare at your handle bars to long or other bad thing can happen!

JoeyBike

Garmin Radar - $300US.

Mirror - $15US. No batteries required, can tell you instantly how WIDE the approaching vehicles are and how mush SPACE they are giving you. Completely analog. Mounted on a helmet and you never have to LOOK DOWN to know a vehicle is approaching.

Looking down a thousand times during a ride is really hard on neck muscles. Looking down increases the chance that your front wheel will find something hateful to hit, fall into, or slip out from under you.

I do understand the concept of wanting to make money. I bet Garmin sells a ton of those things. I do not disapprove of this, especially for those folks who can't figure out the mirror thingy.

ItsJustMe

Time to strap a brick onto a bracket exactly at eye level for a driver, with an alert yellow sign on it saying "if you hit me, this will kill you. Don't text and drive."

JoeyBike

I sometimes daydream about sharp objects loaded into the steering wheel air bag compartment creating more careful drivers. Then someone at Toyota actually did it! Not sure if anyone is driving safer or not, but it was a nice try.

Krieke

Is getting hit from behind really such a big problem? I tell beginning cyclists to stop worrying about the cars behind them. Car drivers aren't homocidal maniacs, and they don't like getting scratches or dents on their vehicles. They usually see what's going on in front of them. It's cross traffic you should worry about. But that would require a radar that looks through buildings...

JonnyHK 

You don't get out much do you?

Car drivers might not be homicidal maniacs, but they are generally idiots who do stuff like drink drive, fall asleep or bonehead stuff like texting while driving.

Plenty of riders are hit from behind on wide roads will clear views...

Krieke

I only ride my bicycle about 30 km a day. That's not a lot, yes.

And those car drives eventually end up hitting something. And that something is usually not going to be a cyclist, since there are lots of things out there that are not cyclists that are nevertheless going to spoil your life as a driver.
But maybe drives in your town are indeed less intelligent than in the rest of the world. I doubt this however.
Im my town, not only is my experience that drivers do see me if I make sure that I am visible, but that they even will correctly interpret my body language. I only have to look over my left shoulder and the cars in the next lane start slowing down, assuming (correctly) that I intend to merge. That's one reason not to look over my shoulder unless I'm indeed planning to move left.

The statistics don't bear this out.
A Tale of Three Cities

JonnyHK 

The League of American Cyclists puts it at 1 in 4 for fatal accidents.

Those are unpleasant odds. More so if you consider that some of the survivors are likely to be very badly injured.

Perhaps not the most common type of accident, but certainly one of the most dangerous. Something worth avoiding - with a mirror or any tools you can get.

Krieke

Quite often the cyclist contributes to the accident by not being very visible, by for example cycling at night without lights, or hugging the kerb. I always make sure my lights work, and in winter I'll put on a reflective vest. And I do ride in a predictable, and visible place. I'm not worried about the car behind me.

Matariki

How much googling did you do until you found some stats that supported your position? IMHO, these are dubious in value because:

1) These stats are 20 years old
2) They use data generated by 3 urban police depts. (a lot of rear-end hits happen outside of urban areas)
3) Population of the areas included in the study amount to less than a half percent of the US population.

I don't know what current national statistics will say, but anecdotally close to half of the fatalities in this area (last 3 years) were hits from behind.

I agree with you about staying visible and riding alertly, but I have seen enough drivers in my mirror drift over into the bike lane to be as comfortable as you seem to be.

genec

Those statistics are from the time before smart phones, texting, and touch screens...

The google self driving cars (which obey the laws to the letter) have been hit a number of times and rarely are these collisions being reported to police (hence are not even available statistically). They are reporting a much more collision prone society than stats from the '70s (so often quoted by certain BF members) and stats from '95 (your example).
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-v...r-46fc9f3e6088
So over half the crashes out there never make it into reports, and while they are light crashes, imagine what such a collision might do to a cyclist.

From my own perspective, I have been hit three times in over 40 years... only ONE of those collisions was reported. All three got me banged up and ruined a bike.

Official stats are only as good as the data from which they are gathered.

Krieke

What's the penalty for texting while driving in the states? Over here in Switzerland on a first offence you loose your licence for three months. (Also when texting while operating a bicycle...)

That's true. I looked for stats for my area, and all I could find is that here 82% of all bicycle accidents are "self accidents", and that only in about 3% of bike/car accidents is the cyclist hit from behind. I've never been hit by a car (and I've been cycling for almost 40 years) but I have had two serious falls, one my own fault, the other the fault of another cyclist.