A Brilliant Idea - Portable Bike Lane

A close brush with a distracted driver is enough to intimidate the most avid bikers from riding at night. The problem isn’t just about visibility, as safety lights are effective at capturing the attention of a driver. However, these lights are typically constrained to the bike frame, which highlights only a fraction of the bike’s envelope. Bike lanes have proven to be an effective method of protecting cyclists on congested roads. One key is that the lane establishes a well defined boundary beyond the envelope of the bicycle, providing a greater margin of safety between the car and the cyclist. Yet, only a small fraction of streets have dedicated bike lanes, and with an installation cost of $5,000 to $50,000 per mile, we shouldn’t expect to find them everywhere anytime soon. Instead of adapting cycling to established bike lanes, the bike lane should adapt to the cyclists. This is the idea behind the LightLane. Our system projects a crisply defined virtual bike lane onto pavement, using a laser, providing the driver with a familiar boundary to avoid. With a wider margin of safety, bikers will regain their confidence to ride at night, making the bike a more viable commuting alternative.

A friend sent this post to me...I've noticed it on several other blogs. The first came from here.

A short note

Another weekend has come and gone. The weather was decent enough and I got in a couple rides. Even though I do not miss having a car, I do miss being able to go places pretty quickly...like the store.

I certainly do not miss buying gas and stop and go traffic. I really enjoy being out in the elements and moving on my own power...even in the rain.

I do occasionally miss hopping into the car and buzzing up to the store or to a movie. A bicycle is definitely a lesson in patience and I'm afraid I don't always have patience. I suppose it does say something about an automobile society: we need to go fast with everything we do...fast work, fast food and even fast entertainment. We seem like a generation of attention deficit disorder cases.

Then there's the bike: it takes time to get from point a to b, and a little planning in some cases. If I end up on the wrong side of town I can't just jaunt back across in a few minutes. A bike is definitely more about the journey than the destination.

After a couple months having a bike as my sole means of transportation I'm beginning to appreciate the journey more for better or worse. I hope my patience grows along with my love of cycling.