Wish to look extra like a human and fewer like an object whereas driving your bike at evening? Challenge Flock might have the rear mild you’re searching for.
There isn’t a have to enumerate why biking after darkish on busy roads is harmful. So long as automobiles and bicycles exist, so will the competitors between them for room on the street.
Challenge Flock launched one distinctive answer to the inherent hazards of driving a bicycle in visitors: make cyclists look extra like, properly, cyclists.
That’s what the Flock Gentle goals to do. By casting mild towards the rider’s transferring legs, the rear bike mild produces an impact meant to make different street customers acknowledge cyclists as such sooner.
For Challenge Flock founder Tim Ottaway, it’s an invention born of necessity.
“I really bought into driving as a result of a buddy recommended I journey my bike to work as a substitute of driving the bus, and that’s actually the place all of it modified,” he says in a YouTube clip. “[S]afety is without doubt one of the greatest boundaries that cyclists face. Top-of-the-line short-term options is to be extra seen or extra recognizable.”
To perform that, the Flock Gentle makes use of an LED array that lights up the bike owner’s legs and throws a “halo” of sunshine on the street across the rider. The impact is like stage lighting: the transferring rider stands out within the ensuing glow.
Challenge Flock additionally designed the sunshine to sense ambient mild modifications, so it ought to shine extra brightly as circumstances get darker. Lastly, it doesn’t search to seize drivers’ consideration by blinding them. Opting towards the rapidly-blinking-super-high-power-LED mannequin, the Flock Gentle appears to be like to draw consideration with the human physique itself.
“A human type is way extra recognizable to the human mind than a purple flashing bike mild as a result of we react to it on a extra emotional and cognitive degree,” Ottaway asserts.
Whether or not human our bodies or brilliant purple flashing lights make you react extra emotionally, the Flock Gentle is the primary of its type to make us contemplate the query.
The venture takes off with a Kickstarter on August 16. Pricing info and additional particulars remained unavailable as of this writing, although it does seem the Flock Gentle shall be seat-mounted solely.
