Last November, six cyclists in London were killed within 14 days, sparking a massive “die-in” protest, yet London isn’t alone; 176 cyclists or pedestrians were killed in New York City in 2012. The rapidly rising death toll is spurring a race to build a technology to warn drivers before they hit someone on foot or bike.
As The Guardian notes, the majority of deaths are caused by truck drivers, quoting statistics that show trucks are involved in more than half of cycling deaths but only account for 5% of road traffic.
Now, Transport for London is testing three systems that are designed to issue warnings to drivers who might not see a cyclist or pedestrian in the path of their vehicle. Each is different, though a common goal is to warm drivers of cyclists in their blind spots.
CycleEye
An engineering firm in Bristol called Fusion Processing makes a product called CycleEye™ that uses inputs from cameras and radar mounted on buses, designed to record data within six feet of the each side of the vehicle.
The data is pulled through a “detection algorithm” that, according to Fusion, makes it possible to detect the lone cyclist against a mess of trees, weather, and moving cars. Then, it alerts the driver to the danger. “This not only reduces false alerts, but reduces the cognitive load on a busy driver, enabling a faster response in potentially critical situations, in turn providing a more effective detector,” the company explains.
Safety Shield
Then there’s Safety Shield Systems, a company that’s using the same technology to spot cyclists and pedestrians that self-driving cars use on the road. The proprietary tech was developed by the Israeli company Mobileye, which uses video inputs and motion sensors.
But Safety Shield uses the data to warn drivers rather than steer the car. It does this in two ways: First, via a heads-up panel that shows where the cyclist is, and then, through a “critical” sound warning if a collision is imminent.
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