Hasta La Ideas

“Blaze,” a bicycle light concept by Emily Brooke, a product design student at the University of Brighton, has been getting some buzz in the cyclo-sphere lately. The handlebar-mounted laser projects a bright green virtual bike lane in front of a cyclist in order to increase visibility, especially in automobile blind spots.

As of press time, this is the only image available. It illustrates the concept but leaves a lot to be desired…

Brooke explains her thought process:

I wanted to tackle the issue of safety of cyclists on city streets by increasing the visibility, footprint, and ultimately the awareness of the bicycle. Eighty per cent of cycle accidents occur when bicycles travel straight ahead and a vehicle manoeuvres into them. The most common contributory factor is ‘failed to look properly’ on the part of a vehicle driver. The evidence shows the bike simply is not seen on city streets.

Even when lit up like a Christmas tree a bicycle in a bus’s blind-spot is still invisible. With BLAZE, you see the bike before the cyclist and I believe this could really make a difference in the key scenarios threatening cyclists’ lives on the roads.

Many of the articles refer to Evan Gant and Alex Tee’s “LightLane” concept (above), which projects a lane behind and to the sides of a cyclist (as opposed to in front of him or her). We got a first look at it when Gant and Tee entered it in a commuter cycling competition nearly two and a half years ago.

For her part, Brooke’s concept has earned her a place in an Entrepreneurship Program at Babson College in Massachusetts. While “LightLane” hasn’t made it out of the prototype phase, hopefully “Blaze” will move forward with the vigor that its name suggests. Of course, if it were up to me, the three of them would team up with Ethan Frier and Jonathan Ota of “Project Aura” to create the safest, most visible bike ever.

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