The âhello!â motion to signal your blinking left turn is IDENTICAL to the existing standard right turn signal. This is literally the worst thing.
If the driver doesnât see the light, â note well that no driver is expecting to see a light - the driver sees âright turnâ and expects the bicyclist to peel away from him or her. Instead, the bicyclist cuts in front of the car.
Edited to add: went back and finished watching their commercial. Oh, God, itâs a Google programmer disrupting how we try to get home in one piece.
It seems to me like just using some highly reflective tape in the shape of an arrow on the gloves would serve the same purpose without the additional technology burden⌠if youâre going to go through the trouble of using powered accessories, they should probably outperform what a passive solution can do. Blinkers that would work without removing your hand from the bars is justifiable, but this approach just seems like an excuse to use LEDs with no real practical benefit.
That was my first thought too. If we are going to use left-hand-for-left-turn and right-hand-for-right-turn as a standard (and I know many people wonât agree with that), then it would be better to use a straight arm with the arrow pointing along the arm. I suspect also that at normal distances many drivers wonât see the signal as an arrow, just as a blinking light.
When other cyclists do that idiotic âhelloâ thing, I wave back. The stupid signal needs to be retired. Just point your arm in the direction youâre turning, people.
I see by your helmet and nose scarf that you are a serious bicyclist, as am I. Surely you must agree that drivers are a selfish and inattentive lot, and there is some value to displaying your signal more centrally to the driverâs field of view â especially if youâre off to the right a bit?
Agreed. Just started cycling again, and it occurs to me that not all drivers have been briefed on bicyclist hand signals.
Bicyclist hand signals that, by the way, assume that everyone is right handed, and incapable of taking the right hand off the handlebars without crashing. Really not the case.
Turn signal kits exist for bikes. Leave it to a valley programmer to invent devices loved only by hipsters.
Yeah, but turning right isnât generally a high risk manoeuvre. Youâre turning away from traffic. If a motorist misses the signal, they arenât really any more likely to hit you. The signal is more a courtesy than a safety thing. The left hand waving signal is just confusing.
And donât get me started on why most bicycles have their front brake on the left. Whatâs that about?
Yup, and if you want to signal âIâm going down!â then fire the LEDs along with extending the proper arm.
Wrong LED orientation for whatâs understood where I ride my bike.
Indeed. I find its greatest benefit is reassuring a driver behind me that Iâm peeling off shortly, and that his nightmarish delay will be over soon.
Can we agree that the gloveâs arrow direction toward the edge of your hand to be counterproductive with both signaling systems?
Thatâs for righties only. Let a sample doubleplusbrake both sides and check whoâs tumbling over the front wheel. Especially with disc brakes.
Flipping over the handlebars is what.
Indeed.
Luckily, that signal doesnât even exist here in Austria. We just point where weâre going.
Which means that those arrows will always be pointing downwards.
Strange.
Same in Germany. The arm on the side where you want to turn or change is fully extended sideways.
I donât think those signals originated from assuming cyclists are right handed. My understanding is that they originated from people driving cars in the days before cars were equipped with turn signal flashing lights (which didnât really become standard until after WWII). They used the left arm exclusively because in left-hand-drive cars you canât reach your right arm out the window. In countries where right-hand-drive cars are standard, the hand signals use the right arm.
Excellent for the misanthropes and pessimists among us.
As an urban and rural cyclist as well as a training and acquisition tasked fire and EMS officer(in addition to normal field work) I can say that lights, bright and many lights are vital to cyclist survival. I made a pair of these turn signal gloves in the early 2000s but as is mentioned above they end up going against the left arm out or up conventions, signals which I suspect are about as well understood by modern death tank drivers as morse code. Hand signals are good, LED brake signals not so much, I am on the fence about turn signals except as above signalling the end of irritation of loosing 10-30 seconds of an effortless petro powered commute.
Yep, while there already are (quasi-?)universal already taught-in-kindergarten hand signals which cost nothing (both in money and in ecological terms), it makes much more sense to develop an adding-to-landfill product.
And nearly $100. Jeepers, give that money to the Nepal fund.
The best use of LEDs on cyclist clothing I have seen were not turn signals, but gave a rough outline of the whole body, including the arms. With such, in some situations, you might get a motorist to take notice of where you are and what youâre doing, which might include pointing in the direction you intended to turn. In general, though, you just have to take care to stay out of the way, because a significant proportion of motorists are not really aware of their surroundings or do not have good control over their vehicles (which, to make matters worse, are often behemoths these days).
