When we’re in the midst of traffic and another automobile suddenly imperils our safety, we have recourse: the car horn. All a driver has to do is slam down on the horn (and maybe the brakes), and the other driver will hopefully be alerted to the presence of another vehicle and instinctively adjust their driving behavior accordingly. But one section of the population that doesn’t have the option to honk their horn is cyclists.
That could all change, though, now that a research engineer based in the Boston area has introduced something called Loud Bicycle. This is basically a horn that can be attached to bicycles so that the persons on the backs of those bicycles can alert drivers when they are about to collide with them. The inventor said that many times, a driver won’t notice a cyclist until it’s too late, and simply yelling isn’t sufficient to get the motor vehicle operator’s attention.
The inventor thus set out to create a prototype that would act for bikes how other horns act for cars. A high and low pitched tone combine to alert other drivers similar to how a horn on a compact car would operate. The low pitch allows it to travel through windows and alert the driver effectively.