Truck Horn for Bicycles

Bike paths, here in the USA, when they exist at all, tend to exist along only one side of the road. So, sometimes a cyclist will be traveling with the automobile traffic, and sometimes against that traffic.

Now consider a cyclist going against traffic, and reaching an ordinary intersection/road-crossing. Two branches of the intersection are of course part of the road that the cyclist has been riding near; one branch of the intersection is on the other side of that road, from the cyclist, and the fourth branch is, in this example, what the cyclist needs to cross.

Now consider a vehicle waiting in that fourth branch of the intersection, preparing to make a turn toward the cyclist. Carefully note that the car won't have to cross any traffic to make the turn, if simply getting into the nearest lane; it just has to join the traffic flow in that lane.

So the driver will be waiting for an opening, and will be observing the traffic that is moving toward both the car and the cyclist, as the cyclist approaches the intersection.

Depending on habit, with respect to making this kind of turn at an intersection, the driver may fail to look both ways, and thus would fail to see the oncoming cyclist. I personally have had to jump off my bike a couple of times to avoid getting run over by cars turning at intersections, as described above.

So, here is where the Truck Horn for Bicycles comes into the picture. Mounted for convenient activation, it includes a very small wheel-mounted generator that (A) trickle-charges a capacitor bank, and (B) extracts so little power from the cycling effort that the cyclist barely notices.

However, when the horn button is pressed, the capacitor bank is disharged through it, and the driver of the automobile, waiting to turn at the intersection, will thus be loudly informed of a need to look both ways, before turning.