re: #423 Bubblehead II

Hey WW. What is your take on this?

Boise cyclist hopes new bike camera will help increase awareness

BOISE — When bicyclists hit the road for a ride, they deal with a number of dangers. One of the biggest: the drivers using the same streets to get to where they’re going.

The woman they interviewed kept emphasizing that it would make cyclists FEEL safer. I’m not a big fan of that as a reason to do things. That’s the same reason they give for making bike lanes, it will make cyclists FEEL safer. Meanwhile in the case of bike lanes, it is actually making them LESS safe. In the video, it showed a guy riding in a DZBL, a door zone bike lane. If somebody opened their door while parked there, that would take out a cyclist.

Having a record of the license of a vehicle that hit you would be invaluable, and worth running the camera, even though being hit from behind is about the most rare kind of bicycle wreck. A 360 degree camera set up would be better. It’s more likely a car will pull out or turn in front of you. (That’s only accounting for wrecks that are the fault of the driver. Cyclist-caused wrecks are at least 50% of wrecks.)

The only thing that makes cyclists ACTUALLY safer is education, mainly
for the cyclist, but also for auto drivers.

And as stpaulbear said, the blinky lights are good. It would also be good if drivers could tell they were being recorded, but it’s not clear to me that they would, even if they saw the Fly6 installed.