Bicycle usage is increasing worldwide, especially in urban areas. They are already the most used means of transportation for more than 40 million EU citizens. Nevertheless, cycling cannot be considered a safe means of transport due to the greater vulnerability of the riders who are relatively unprotected road users interacting with traffic of high speed and mass, suffering the most severe consequences in collisions with other road users. They have just two wheels to balance, no chassis to protect them and no devices to communicate with other vehicles. Such vulnerability is reflected in high accident rates: in the EU alone, 2,112 cyclists died in road accidents in 2014 and every year, more than 200,000 non-fatal accidents involve cyclists in the EU.
Statistics clearly show that more than 55% of these accidents occur at crossroads, junctions and roundabouts in urban areas and currently cyclists lack appropriate technical equipment to keep them safe in such common traffic situations. However, cyclists still use hand signals to indicate their intention of turning entailing several drawbacks (not visible at night, difficult to execute at hihg-speed, and not appropriate for specific users such as children or elderly). Moreover, drivers often overtake cyclists too close for comfort. Close passes account for around a third of all threatening incidents between drivers and cyclists and drivers also have difficulties in respecting the cyclist’s space when the cyclist brakes/decelerates.
As cycling is encouraged, bike safety accessories become more fundamental for the EC to complete its ambitious Transport 2050 plan that outlines plans to ensure that the EU is a world leader in safety and security of transport. Furthermore, as e-bikes become more widespread nowadays, the number of crashes in which they are involved is also growing. Moreover, 29% of e-bikers experienced a safety incident that would not have happened on a conventional bike as other road users underestimate the speed of e-bikes. Studies show that e-bike–related trauma may involve serious injuries and have typical injury patterns that resemble those seen in motorcycle-related injuries. In the Netherlands, more cyclists than car occupants lost their lives on Dutch roads last year, with the number of people killed while riding their bicycles attributed to a sharp rise in men aged over 65 riding e-bikes.
To address this problems we have developed Blinkers, a holistic plug-and-play safely solution for cyclist. Blinkers’ system architecture comprises of front and rear blinkers, smart lights, a laser perimeter and a control pad - through which the whole systems operates. The system is designed to solve cyclists’ problems in urban environments namely - visibility and predictability when changing directions; obviousness when braking and that their safety space respected. During the Feasibility Study we surveyed early adopters and found that the current features of Blinkers meet or exceed the expectations of users so we decided to focus our product development on adapting Blinkers to meet the needs of additional growing markets namely, e-bikes and e-bike sharing schemes (anti-vandal system and charging system).
