Introducing BLAZE: a laser that projects bike image onto road

11 comments
By BikeRadar UK | Monday, Jun 6, 2011 11.20am

A University of Brighton student has developed a safety device that projects a bright green laser image of a bike onto the road ahead – alerting motorists to their presence.

Brooke, who is in the final year of her Product Design course, told BikeRadar she believed the design was a really simple idea which could make a huge difference to the safety of cyclists on our roads.

“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," she said. “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.”

BLAZE will be on show along with other final-year student inventions at an exhibition in the Creativity Suite at the university’s Moulsecoomb campus today (6 June). For more information, For more information, click here.

You can follow BikeRadar on Twitter at twitter.com/bikeradar and on Facebook at facebook.com/BikeRadar.

You might also like...

User Comments

There are 11 comments on this post

Showing 1 - 11 of 11 comments

  • good effort, all to the good.

  • She should be applauded for an interesting bit of lateral thought but I can't see this being made street legal, it could just be an escalation in the lumen war. I do wonder if its more or less blinding than a high power headlamp when shone straight into the eyes though...

  • What a great idea!

  • Green laser?

    Great for making blind people!

    What about flamer insted of bike horns?

  • Great idea. Whether it comes to any kind of fruition or not, full credit to Emily for looking into potential solutions and thinking laterally.

  • This would be awesome for a spot of SCR :-) It's bad enough on a dark evening seeing the spot of someone's light come up alongside you - could even do a special SCR edition that projects your FCN onto the floor ;-)

  • Been done - http://www.lightlanebike.com/

  • +1 for bassjunkieuk's modded SCR edition that projects your FCN! Imma firin' up mah lazors!

  • Sketchley,

    The "LightLane" project an image behind the rider which seems a lot less useful since it doesn't help with the blind spot issue. Also, the site implies that it's only visible in darkness.

    I'm not sure if the BLAZE will work in practice but it's not a completely terrible idea unlike most of what design students come up with for cyclists.

  • The point is it projects the image way in front to give plenty of warning.

  • I want a laser for my handlebars. But not some driver-dazzling mincing 'safety laser'. I want a proper laser death ray.

    SMDSY? Take that. Now you don't see anything. BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE A HEAD BWAHAHAHA. Feel the power of my SAFETY LASER.

Post a Comment:

You need to login or register to post comments.