It’s hard to know how best to deal with drivers who overtake too fast and too close, but Backtracker believes the answer lies with its high-tech bicycle rear light that can monitor approaching traffic and warn of vehicles approaching at speed.
The device can detect vehicles at distances up to 150 metres and speeds of up to 100 mph. Handlebar-mounted LEDs display the rate of approach.
Whislt there is no doubt that drivers who overtake too close are a dangerous menace and massively off-putting for novice cyclists, it’s hard to know how seeing them approach on a radar screen would do anything other than increase anxiety. An option to lock on to the approaching threat, in the way that a fighter jet makes its precense known to its foe, might be an altogether more reassuring and efective propostion. Backtracker website
The Journey Begins from Backtracker on Vimeo.
Our own take on the problem of drivers who overtake too close was the BOND bike, an all-terrain custom design fitted with handlebar mounted flame throwers.
Tony Whitfield
Now if the Backtracker could emit an Electromagnetic pulse at a speeding vehicle that would be much, much more useful, and coukd save lives. I have eyes and a mirror, I don’t need a radar to tell me an ass is approaching.