Close pass-sensing and recording device to determine safety of roads launches on Kickstarter

All these technological advances become irrelevant when 2 important factors are taken into account:

It may be possible to find a BMW (other nutter drivers are available) driver who will pay attention to those 1.5 m lines illuminated on the road, but it won't be easy. The great majority will continue to come as close as they feel like when there's an oncoming vehicle to avoid, as they won't even consider slowing down or waiting to overtake.

The main objective of the police (with due respect to Inspector Kevin Smith and the Sheffield NW NPT), at least in Lancashire, is to think up reasons to not do anything. Any measuring device mounted on a bike will be described by them as uncalibrated, and will be completely disregarded. 

Evening everyone, been reading this all with interest, (OB here creator of tether,)

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments, feedback and insights, its definitely given us a lot to think about. I would love to respond to all of these individually as well but just wanted to say a few things, as so many of you have taken the time to comment its the least we can do. 

We've been working on tether for a year and a half, during that time we've had to manage the conflict between getting a visible projection, making it work universally on bikes, something that the cyclist on the street can install out of the box while measuring and mapping the distance of overtaking cars

this is v1.0 of the product which we will continue to refine with additional add ons (rear facing projection, add different colours different patterns, even a hear to say thankyou) add it to your scooter and eventually fully integrated into the bike.

The data to show overtaking cars and the location that they happen is what we've focussed on to make our product unique, there are so many amazing companies with great cycling products, Garmin, Blaze, Beeline, Lumos to name a few... we wanted to create something that helps cyclists understand where it is and isnt safe to cycle, to help people in charge of installing cycling lanes to know where to put them and how effective they are and to encourage better dialogue between cyclists and all road users. 

In answer to some specific questions:

• We're aiming to update the projection to be wider to be seen by approaching cars and better represent the 1.5m space needed to overtake safely.
• This time next year we will be millionaires (he who dares Rodders) more likely we'll have to make do with the OF&H mugs we get every year at Christmas since we moved to Peckam.
• Safe and unsafe zones is not meant to be negative rather new knowledge for cyclists to know the 'pinch points' and watch out areas as they commute (or help with better road plannins by cities)
• We understand that Kickstarter products can be risky, that's why we are only shipping to the UK, manufacturing in the UK, filming only the real working prototypes in demos (no smoke and mirrors) so people can see what they're going to get and testing the existing prototypes with users to learn and improve all the time.
• The lights do not work in the daytime, the projection comes into its own in lower lighting conditions but the sensors map traffic data all the time
• The camera integration ideas are brilliant, really. We'll get to this as soon as we can
• The promotional picture is of an early prototype which we've widened since and will contunue to widen.
• Battery life is 6 hours.

We're crowdfunding on Kickstarter because we're a small independent company trying to fix a big problem. Step 1 is to get this out to as many people as possible, so that we can begin gathering the data for where its safe and unsafe to cycle. Its the best way to travel after all.

Ride safe, ride happy and please contact or ping us a message or comment here if you need to know anything else.

OB & the tether team

The data mapping and reporting features sound similar to what see.sense claim to do with their lights, albeit for road surface conditions rather than for close passes.

Isn't this what Inspector Kevin was asking for in NMOTD 651.

I appreciate that this is a prototype and hasn't been fully developed, but where is the side firing gun for cars that come within a metre?

Besides, what is the point of having a light shining to the side when the driver will not be able to see it?  Unless it shines 10m ahead and is extremely bright, it ain't gonna make no difference.

"the Peckham-based startup"

This time next year, Rodders, we'll be millionaires.

I thank you and will get my own coat.

Nice idea, but I don't trust electronic KickStarter products from unknown companies - there's just too many things to go wrong with the whole project.

Even better would be incorporating this kind of tech into bike cameras. I could imagine the end-game would be to fit a couple of cameras and they submit their own footage automatically to willing police departments.

The promotional picture shows poorly lit dots on the ground and does not cover the recommended 1.5m for safe overtakes. I wonder how bright they are in the daytime as well.

Think I'll save my money for now.

So it doesn't do anything useful, like make a camera recording of the offending incident ... it just enables you to plot where the incident happened?

Based on the article above, I would have thought that the device has more use for those that design our shared areas, rather than a useful tool for individual users.

Given how its virtually indistinct on the sample photo of it in action on a normal road, I appreciate when moving its probably but better but still it's not exactly shouting for attention is it?

Also bluetooth is going to make it battery hungry both for the device & your companion app, ie phone.

I like the idea of a close pass sensor, partly to see how bad it is sometimes,but I dont think this is it.

From the promotional picture, I'm not sure that those dots are a. anywhere near visible enough, and b. actally spread out into anything like a wide enough area to actually suggest anything to a driver wanting to overtake.

If car companies added a sensor into the car that flashed up an alert on the dash when they pass too close it would probably make a bigger difference than anything a cyclist can actually do themselves.

Is it clever enough to work out there are 2 lanes, or filtering left or on the right?

What about oncoming traffic?

Seems to be pushing towards victim blaming if it comes up with unsafe zones in your city - "you shouldn't be cycling here it is unsafe".

It would probably be better for battery life/disk capacity to just record the cars that pass safely.