In The « Great Idea, But Impossible To Implement » Department
Posted by Mike Werner on Nov 15th 2016
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| The idea is great; fantastic really. Imagine a small free device that can be used by anyone using the road; cars, trucks, buses, bicycles and most important, motorcycles. The device that will warn you when a fragile user (in other words, a motorcyclist) is close to you! |
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| The device is in fact your smartphone (iPhone or Android), and the free app is called The Bike Shield. |
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| Bike Shield communicates with other Bike Shield apps while travelling. Using the accelerator function, it knows when you are on the move. It then starts looking for other Bike Shield apps around it. |
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| For example, you (equipped with the Bike Shield app) are on your trusty motorcycle, splitting lanes, and a car in front of you has the Bike Shield app. The car driver gets a beep about 10 seconds before you fly past the car. This way the driver is warned not to change lanes. The same applies for buses and trucks. | |
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| Great idea, isn’t it? Well, it is, especially since it’s free. But unfortunately there is a downside or two which will make the whole idea moot. | |
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| First of all, it would require most, if not all, vehicle users to have the app. No one is going to make it mandatory, so why would a car/truck or bus driver use it? The only ones that would use the app would be the ones who care about bikers, and they already pay attention to bikers, so they don’t really need the app. | |
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Secondly, if you get visual and audio alerts, drivers are going to quickly turn off the app when driving in town, since there are many bikes out there, and the thing is going to beeeep all the time. And that’s when you need it the most….. |
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| So, great idea but not practical. Pity, since it would make our lives a lot safer. Maybe in the future when governments make this mandatory. | |
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