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Posted by zh3 3 days ago

Canyon HUD helmet for road riding(media-centre.canyon.com)
109 points | 130 commentspage 2
airstrike 1 day ago|
I feel like this would work better if it were cheap enough to serve Uber Eats delivery workers instead of pro riders.
bdavbdav 1 day ago|
I’m not sure they need any more distractions
KeplerBoy 1 day ago|||
Having the route in your fov without taking the eyes off the road seems like a win. But we all know it would end up with people watching tiktok instead.
blacksmith_tb 1 day ago||
As someone who commutes in traffic daily, this is not what I need or want. First up, it looks heavy and badly-ventilated, and then there's the potential for distracting info blocking my view of the actual road in front of me. Even if it was really good info (which would take really good sensors, plus a lot of compute to cram onboard), I am skeptical it'd be better than, you know, paying attention to your surroundings. I like ADAS functionality in modern cars just fine, but it seems like a stretch to try and bring it to bikes. What we all could use is some kind of ad hoc network between all road users, so the car that was thinking about turning in front of me could ping my helmet / bike and understand that it should wait and turn behind me instead.
needSomeCoffee 1 day ago||
I also did many miles commuting and riding in the city. A key, absolute rule after too many close calls was to never cross in front of a car about to enter or cross-over the road I was on unless I could see the driver looking at me. No matter how clear my right-of-way was or how obvious I thought I was. One close call about every 10K miles or so was enough for me to realize only purely defensive riding in the city would keep me uninjured (or worse). Sure a lot of riders rail at bad drivers, but that doesn't help in the end if you get t-boned. Hope this helmet helps with that.
cobbzilla 1 day ago||
+1 to this. I always make eye contact with the driver in any iffy scenario. If you’re going to commit vehicular manslaughter on me, you’re gonna have to look me in the eye while you do it!
dmurray 1 day ago|||
What information would your bike send to the car in this example that would help?

We're closer to having lidar in all new cars than this mesh network, so "There's a bike behind you travelling approximately X speed" is something the car already knows. "The cyclist requested you not to turn in front of him" - why would anyone ever send anything else?

Perhaps the car can send you a message instead "I'm going to cut you off and there's nothing you can do about it" but even if that might actually improve safety I don't think it's the change you'd want to see.

blacksmith_tb 17 hours ago|||
The idea would be more like the car, not the human behind the wheel, would realize that if it right-hooked me that would be bad (read insurance-increasing, citeable offense, etc.) and wait, where the driver would just keep flipping through their playlist and crush me.
bboozzoo 1 day ago|||
> "There's a bike behind you travelling approximately X speed"

Funny how garmin varia gives the exact same information but on cars. "There's a car behind you travelling approximately X speed" (which is most often over the speed limit anyway)

bdavbdav 1 day ago|||
I get the impression that this is not where it’s aimed.
bboozzoo 1 day ago||
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merelysounds 1 day ago||
I wish they showed videos with a human model or the retractable mechanism.

At first glance the visor seems large enough to cover the face, but based on the HUD simulation I guess it only covers the eyes.

nradov 1 day ago||
There have been a few attempts at devices like this before such the Everysight Raptor and Garmin Varia Vision but none of them ever found mainstream adoption. In principle a HUD with navigation cues and key cycling metrics would be nice to have. But the devices have always had problems such as poor integration with bike computers or discomfort on long rides or incompatibility with prescription lenses or just looking goofy. Road cyclists aren't necessarily shy about wearing stupid looking kit but there are limits, and this new Canyon helmet looks like you're cosplaying as a stormtrooper.
chollida1 1 day ago||
I use a Garmin edge bike computer and a Garmin tail light with lidar that shows cars as they come up from behind on you on the computer screen and give audio alert as well.

That works well enough for most road riding. I wonder if having a reverse view mapped onto my glasses would be an improvement or take away from my focus.

limitedmage 1 day ago||
I use a [mirror](https://takealookactive.com/), it adds so much more confidence and safety that I'll refuse to ride without it. Helps me make left turns, avoid aggressive cars, and make sure I'm not dropping my friends. No fancy electronics, no battery to charge, and it's inexpensive to replace.
mc3301 1 day ago||
I've been commuting with a mirror for 5 years; it feels SO dangerous the odd time I commute with my non-mirrored mountain bike.
1shooner 1 day ago||
So about the lidar: what does that actually do for you? Or I should say, what do you do in response to it? Do you yield more road space if it tells you a car is approaching? I've been trying to understand what good such an alert actually does for an otherwise attentive rider.
chollida1 1 day ago||
The lidar shows me:

- if a car is behind me

- how many cars( I think up to 8) are behind me

- what speed they are coming up on me by way of animation

To answer your question about what to do, mostly yes, yield the road if I'm on a country road and get over to the shoulder if there is a good paved one.

It's a valid question if you've never ridden on a country road with cars. You want all the notification you can get if someone is coming up behind you so you can plan what to do

neves 1 day ago||
There are a lot of new safety bike tech gadgets. It's difficult to spot nice ones, like MIPS helmets, from the useless.

Do my fellow hacker news readers recommend some useful tech for bikes?

Wicher 1 day ago||
Hmmmmm, a visor? I suppose it'll get steamed up pretty easily when hillclimbing on a cold damp morning.
eff_kaufel 1 day ago||
As a cyclist myself. I’m not sure I could wear something like this.
msandford 1 day ago|
This really seems like a solution in search of a problem. Maybe it would be useful for pro tour riders, but I would guess it'll be banned as not in the spirit of cycle racing. Recumbents would really change the game in the pro tour for speed but the UCI doesn't allow them for the same reason.
nradov 1 day ago||
The target market is more likely to be affluent amateurs rather that pros. The pros will typically have a team car or radio for navigation, and aren't as dependent on metrics like power or heart rate for training.

Recumbent bikes might be fun to watch in time trial races but would be ridiculously dangerous in a peloton. Visibility is bad enough on a regular bike when you're at the back of a group, and the lower perspective on a recumbent would make mass crashes even more likely. Yikes.

freejazz 1 day ago|||
And recumbents on descents? Yeeeucchhh
snovv_crash 1 day ago||
At least you crash feet-first.
loeg 1 day ago||||
The target market is media (and social media). This won't be sold.
Skidaddle 1 day ago|||
This is unfortunately how I feel about AR in general, despite having worked in the space for a while.
jeffbee 1 day ago||
These things are already banned by UCI. Any kind of display has to be attached to the bike.

I can see a HUD (not this one) for non-pro club riders, though. It might be nice to be able to see your stats while holding a wheel at 20+ MPH, without having to look away.

andreareina 1 day ago||
Except I've not heard of anyone using them, either online or IRL. If I'm holding a wheel my head unit is close to where I'm already looking, and the focus shift is similar to (or less than) going from the wheel in front of me to infinity where HUDs typically put things at.
jeffbee 18 hours ago||
Yeah I've never heard of it either. I was just trying to steelman their motivations for this demo.
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