Reactiv LED cycling jacket

I am a little late in mentioning this, but for those of you who have not seen it, here is a picture of designer Michael Chen’s Reactiv cycling jacket. The jacket, which uses colored LEDs to indicate when the rider is accelerating or decelerating based on movement sensed by a built in accelerometer, recently won a 2008 James Dyson Award. The jacket also has amber LEDs in the sleeves that serve as turn signals when the wearer’s arm is lifted. A recent article in BikeBiz pointed out that two other bike related products were on the shortlist for a Dyson Foundation prize this year. A single-handed brake lever, designed by four students at the University of Guelph in Canada, was highly commended and a bike lock that doubles as a front and rear light, designed by Adrian Weidmann of the Zurich University of the Arts, was also in the group of 13 concepts that made the final cut. The BikeBiz article also pointed out a few previous products for cyclists that include wearable indicator lights. Take a look; the article is worth a read.

Les sent me a link to a sculpted wooden tandem that I don’t believe I have posted before. The bike was made by Jens Eichler, a student of wood-technology at the University of Applied Science in Eberswalde, Germany. According to his post, Jens spent about 400 hours working on this project. Check out a few more pictures here.

While I am passing along links from readers, I’ll mention this Japanese multi level bike parking garage that Murray sent. Pretty cool.

Finally, I want to point out a few nice photos of bikes that Ken Conley took at stage one of the Tour de Georgia. I agree with Ken that the older Marco Polo graphic scheme with the dragon details is much nicer than the plainer new bikes. The graphics on the Rock Racing bikes are pretty nice too for racing bikes. You just can’t miss that “lizard juice” green on black color scheme in the peloton. Speaking of the Tour de Georgia, I will be there on Thursday for the team time trail and on Saturday for the Brasstown Bald stage. Not sure about the circuit race in Atlanta on Sunday yet, but I do want to try and make it if I can. Look for my race photos on Flickr toward the end off the week. I’ll post a link here when I have them uploaded, so stay tuned.


Posted

in

by

Comments

7 responses to “Reactiv LED cycling jacket”

  1. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    As far as one handed braking is concerned, the best system I’ve ever seen is the Brake Director: http://brakedirector.com/index.htm This device has been in production for at least five years, and does an amazing job of managing braking forces. Possible patent infringements are being investigated even now. Val

  2. bikesgonewild Avatar
    bikesgonewild

    …james…i think eventually the electro-tech fabric market might offer some really worthwhile safety products…people are starting to do some interesting things…

    …i give the designer props for the work on the wooden tandem, but having been a sculptor, i’m don’t personally enjoy the shape…

    …the japanese multi-level robotic bike parking is awesome but if that ever screwed up, i’m thinkin’ i wouldn’t wanna see my bikes (or what’s left of them) in there..

    …& enjoy the T of G…may the warm sunshine grace you & the lads…

  3. James Avatar
    James

    Val, thanks for the link to your product. Interesting.

    bikesgonewild, the idea of microfiber nanogenerators that can be used to generate power from the movement of textiles is fascinating to me. I agree that there is a huge potential for safety products.

    …and thanks, we will enjoy the TdG.

  4. Sean Roche Avatar
    Sean Roche

    A turn-indicating jacket that requires you to raise your arm to trigger the light misses one of the biggest challenges of signaling a turn on a bike: oftentimes, you need both hands on the handlebars to negotiate a turn. And, when you have to have both hands on the handlebars is probably when you need to signal most.

    Now, if the jacket’s turn signals could be activated with a bar- or glove-activated switch …

  5. Erik Avatar
    Erik

    I really like this concept behind this jacket but would echo the comment about the danger of having to raise your arm to signal a turn.

  6. Olivier Blanchard Avatar
    Olivier Blanchard

    Damn. He stole my idea!

  7. Poley Avatar
    Poley

    Safe Turn http://www.safeturn.com has been on the market for some time now.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *