Garmin patents rear-view bike camera triggered by approaching dangers

That's interesting. I've been wondering if it would be worthwhile, as I'm not that flexible. Looking back can be a problem sometimes.

Adam Sutton wrote:

Looking back can be a problem sometimes

Most especially in Ongar. Actually, I heard tell that their only book shop closed recently. The local rag reported, "Book lack in Ongar."

You could always try a mirror first.

Credit for a low power bike radar concept should go to South African startup iKubu who developed a product call Backtracker, and were acquired by Garmin in 2015. 

capedcrusader wrote:

Don't see the point actually. Riding in town will trigger it all the time, and when you're riding out in the sticks you can hear something coming and work out if its close or moving aside to pass you. 

Would be very useful for people with hearing problems though.

Might be hard to imagine for you, but people who take this sport seriously often ride with some level of headwind which drowns any traffic noise...

Loi wrote:

Might be hard to imagine for you, but people who take this sport seriously often ride with some level of headwind which drowns any traffic noise...

Spiffingly snotty comment - I didn't realise there was a benchmark speed for being regarded as "serious" - but I can hear traffic behind me at 50-60 km/h quite easily, even with my laboured unserious breathing. 

Rendel Harris wrote:

Spiffingly snotty comment - I didn't realise there was a benchmark speed for being regarded as "serious" - but I can hear traffic behind me at 50-60 km/h quite easily, even with my laboured unserious breathing. 

There is no benchmark level. Depends on wind speed and type of vehicle appraching from behind.

If you hear every car, good for you. I, and probably most others, don't.

Imagine being in somewhere like Australia with its long, very fast back country roads.  Any traffic coming from behind might be coming at high speed.

If it's something like a roadtrain it's going to be very big and traveling very fast and probably has a hard time stopping.  Even the stones kicked up by it would be unpleasant to be around.

Your safest option on the bike is to tactically get off the road as soon as possible and let it pass before continuing on your way.

With Varia you can detect it way before you can hear it.  This is just an extension of that very useful concept.

Or indeed, somewhere like Australia where you often have motorists doing 80-100km/hr on any city road straight enough to let them.  My thoughts are that its a meaningless gimmick to collect yet more "oh look, surprisingly bad driving videos" that are of zero use since the police won't act on them

My thoughts are that its a meaningless gimmick to collect yet more "oh look, surprisingly bad driving videos" that are of zero use since the police won't act on them

Not quite zero, if you're prepared to collect cases and keep going against all the police lies and obfuscation as they try to cover up their inactivity and corruption

Grahamd wrote:

The real benefits of such a device will surely require the independent verification of the accuracy in order that they can gain acceptance by the insurance industry and law enforcement. 

Currently most police forces want 2 minutes before and after the incident, so I'm not seeing the benefit of a device that wouldn't be able to supply that.

It's entirely possible that this would be permamently video record mode, but only save the video when it registered an incident. It would then be possible in software to "pad" the video by, say, two minutes to allow a full picture to be saved.

adambowie wrote:

It's entirely possible that this would be permamently video record mode, but only save the video when it registered an incident. It would then be possible in software to "pad" the video by, say, two minutes to allow a full picture to be saved.

That sounds similar to how the Cycliq cams can mark a recording if an incident happens so that it doesn't get overwritten. I'm not convinced this is a good idea - I'd rather have cams that support either multiple SD cards or larger sizes - it's easy enough to buy them in 256GB size which should be more than enough for anyone.

The real benefits of such a device will surely require the independent verification of the accuracy in order that they can gain acceptance by the insurance industry and law enforcement

The police wont even consider accepting any information from such a device, in the same way as they refuse to accept any GPS information. This policy is valuable to them as it enables the 'cylists are always travelling at less than 10 mph' dodge, which they deploy to get drivers off blatant double white line crossing offences. They do this even when you're obviously travelling at well over 20 mph just from looking at the video itself. They do this because they are idle cyclist-hating b******s.

Currently most police forces want 2 minutes before and after the incident

I'm amazed that people put up with this- even Lancashire, the most evil yet inept force outside Gotham City, don't try that dodge any more. You only need about 10 seconds to show that tipper truck, lorry, taxi, Audi towing a caravan etc. crashing through red lights. 30 seconds in total is quite enough for most individual close passing offences, double white line offences etc. Cycling Mikey doesn't give them more than a few seconds. The main aim of the police is to deter the reporting of offences, so they're just making up rules to make if difficult for you if they think you'll go along with it. Another part of the dodge is that you'll probably have to strongly compress a 4 minute video to get it under their file size limits, so they may be able to reject it as 'low quality'

Plus only recording at pass-time would mean potentially a great battery life