Originally Posted by
ksryder
Just heard back from my friend who works art Garmin and with the employee discount I can get it for $110. I will be ordering it post haste.
Double holy carp! There are reports that they’re quite high maintenance, but at that price they’re barely more than new pedals!
Originally Posted by
WhyFi
I guess that my main hesitation on the Varia is... is it a nice-to-have alert or does it give you something actionable? I tend to ride on the shoulder, out of traffic as much as practical, but I'll move in to the lane to avoid hazards, debris, etc (as long as I'm not jumping in front of vehicles moving twice as fast as me). For owners of these units, do you feel that it's solid enough that you can feel comfortable riding further in to the lane, possibly on the smooth passenger side tire track, and only move off when alerted? Or do you still reside mostly on the shoulder and just have piece of mind when moving out for whatever reason? Just curious as to how the info is put to use.
i find myself riding mostly on the smooth track (passenger side as you mentioned) and only move to the shoulder when I hear the quadruple beeps the head unit sounds when radar detects something. There are some false positives, such as when it detects cars on the freeway when I exit an underpass, or similar cross traffic after a stop sign/light, and when a driver doesn’t pass but hover at your speed, it can “undetect” a previously detected car, but by that time you can hear the car and already know they’re behind you.
i always keep it in the flasher mode, and haven’t followed a rider with it, but some say it starts flashing more frequently when a car is behind. There are also riders that claimed they keep its light off and it comes on when it detects a car, but I’m told that function only works with Garmin head units.
If there’s not much of seat post showing, especially with a saddle bag, mounting can be challenging, but there are 3D printed adapters that attach to the loop of the saddle bag..