Vehicle: Bicycle: Safety
Combined brake lever and bell   (+3)  [vote for, against]

When cycling, and when clueless pedestrians leap into the road in my path, my braking reactions are faster than my shouting or bell-ringing reactions, so this idea is for the gripping of the brake lever to ring a loud bicycle bell. The bell would be disabled when cycling in pedestrianless places.
-- hippo, Jul 15 2008

The pedestrians are only trying to cross the road... In my experience a pedestrian is most likely to be hit when trying to cross the road at a traffic light system and there is a green man.
-- Jinbish, Jul 15 2008


Well, my experience, as someone who cycles across London every day (and never jumps traffic lights) is that pedestrians very often just step into the road without looking, nowhere near a crossing point. It's almost like they want get hit by a fast-moving bicycle.
-- hippo, Jul 15 2008


just jam some playing cards in your spokes and they'll hear you coming either way
-- CaptainCrunch, Jul 15 2008


No probs, [hippo]. I'm not tarring you with the brush of the unscrupulous (well, not on any cycling issues anyway).
-- Jinbish, Jul 15 2008


I find that riding on the pavement, whilst blowing a loud whistle works quite well. I learned the whistle trick in New York... and one other thing - I totally ignore traffic lights ("the weaver bird has little brain, it weaves about from lane to lane..". who remembers that ad? Well I'm that weaver bird.
-- xenzag, Jul 15 2008


[xenxag], the next time I am in the Big Apple I will be waiting at a crossing for you...
-- Jinbish, Jul 15 2008


well back to this idea, I already use my brakes to let people know Im coming. Since they are spring loaded they "click" when the are let go. I just squeeze enough so Im not braking yet and then let them go and click. M O S T people hear them and look back, and move.... the others get the crap scared out of them as fly past them going 25mph +
-- evilpenguin, Jul 15 2008



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