Electronics, Lighting, & Gadgets - Lucidbrake: Interesting idea, but bad use of stats

http://www.lucidbrake.com/

The brake looks interesting, but the bad use of stats comes from the sites link that they use http://www.bikeleague.org/media/facts/#americans. I'm looking through that page and don't see where rear crashes are the number one set of accidents. I even checked the pdf that the link linked to and can't find that either.

neat idea. Must have an accelerometer built into it.

neat, where do I get one?

They're not out as retail yet.

I doubt this is going to make anyone much safer w.r.t cars. It only helps when you are being closely followed by a car and stop suddenly. As the fraction of bike accidents that come from being rear ended is only something like 4%, and surely less than half of those are caused by drivers failing to notice that a cyclist is stopping, it can't decrease accidents by more than about 2%.

http://www.lucidbrake.com/

The brake looks interesting, but the bad use of stats comes from the sites link that they use http://www.bikeleague.org/media/facts/#americans. I'm looking through that page and don't see where rear crashes are the number one set of accidents. I even checked the pdf that the link linked to and can't find that either.

I doubt it will do much to make anyone safer. Cars have far stronger brakes than bikes, and the closing rate of a car on a bike from behind is such that it really makes little difference if the bike is braking or not.

On the other hand, if they made a front mounting version of this, with a speaking cyclocomputer, it would be kinda cool. I'd like to be the first guy on my block with a pedal-powered KITT.

From the inventor:


... the comment about bike-to-bike
accidents isn't a hard statistic, it was a comment from someone we know
who rides in a big bike rally each year as a fund raiser. She said they
have several accidents each year, and in almost all cases it's when
they're riding in a group and someone slows or stops in front of someone
else who doesn't notice.

I'll work at the web site to get more accurate statistics. If you
happen to know of any good sources of the statistics we need, that would
be greatly appreciated. I do feel passionate in believing LucidBrake can
help save some percentage of the lives that are lost each year, and some
percentage of the many injuries too. But having accurate statistics is
important.

Car brake lights are really bright. They need to be visible both in daylight and above the cars normal lights in the dark.

How do you do the same thing with a bicycle light which is pretty much underpowered in the first place? Looks like the light only uses a few leds in normal mode then switches all the leds on when braking. Pretty much the opposite approach to a car. I spend most of my time on a bike not braking so purposely reducing my light output just to indicate when I am braking appears a bit stupid.

Running that many leds all the time would rapidly drain my battery. By going up to car-light-level brightness only when applying brakes, the idea is you get lots of light when you need it without crazy power usage.