Cycling app of the week: TravelSafely App

I can see no irony at all in encouraging road users to look away from the road and at their smart-phone in order to make the roads a safer place.

As said above, an app to replace your eyes, great work people!

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Sounds like an app to replace your own eyes.

Well if you're going to bring Brexit into it then it's only right to point out the device comes in a jiffy bag, can detect helmets but bases stopping distance on disc brakes...

If you look at the web site it requires the surrounding city/town etc to have connected smart sensors, lights, speed/flow monitors and its those that its primarily surfacing through its UI. That means the speeding motorist is captured in the system and you are alerted that its approaching. Something for the mainstream in the year never in this country but in some US cities perhaps the infrastructure exists. 

Be good if it comes and I'm sure this won't be the only app, they're just first to exploit the potential.

Odds are if it was just safety concerns it would never happen here but if people are serious about semi or fully autonymous vehicles (think trains of lorries on the motorways or traffic being routed as packets efficiently through a city) then perhaps its a dim possibility for us here in Brixit wastelands... ah wait.....

It's interesting, but in order for it to be effective, everyone needs to be using it, since it works by connecting all road users.

I suppose that if a motorist running the app collided with a cyclist also running the app, it might be possible for the cyclist to use the app to figure out who the motorist was, or at least narrow it down to a few candidates, although that feature would need to be explicitly enabled by the app. And a motorist who was concerned that their phone would rat them out wouldn't run the app in the first place.

I don't see how any of this makes anyone safer.

Knowing when lights are going to change is just as likely to make drivers not slow down when they should on the expectation that it will be going green when they get there, or alternatively to accelerate to get through a green light because it's about to turn red.

Drivers need to be on the look out for all cyclists, as well as pedestrians and other hazards, not just ones that are on the app. There's a risk that drivers will come to rely on the app and drive less safely except where the app warns them.

And what exactly am I supposed to do about the fact that there's a motorist approaching me? So what, 99% of the time they will pass me safely, and doing anything at all would be a ridiculous over-reaction. Unless the app can somehow warn me that the driver is a dangerous moron, it's not going to change my behaviour. 

Anyone here from Tuscaloosa?