Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

Yeas ago I motorcycled a lot, all over the world. I escalated to an air horn and hi-viz. But I pretty quickly realized that these made no tangible difference to the behavior of larger vehicle drivers. So I ended up for later vehicles with a stock horn and hi-viz only for heavy rain.

These days our family cycles a lot for commuting. It’s really easy to observe that people in vehicles treat us far better if we look like humans, wearing normal street clothes, rather than wearing high-viz or, far worse, cycling gear.

The bike bell is for polite notice, not alarming. The best alarm system you have is your voice, which is variable volume and tone. For ultimate effect slap the panels of cars, as it is very loud inside the vehicle.

Be careful with your ears! (And those of others)

A unexpected loud noise recently caused me to get tinnitus and hyperacusis, and trust me, you don't want either of them!

You know a diagnose is bad when Wikipedia lists suicidal thoughts as a common side effect....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacusis

I want to see a bike with a train horn. Cars do it all the time. [1][2][3][4] illegal and highly satisfying

People have used drills+pumps to drive similar hand-held horns at football games so it is doable.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOKgg5iCw_c

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enF0m6J7g2w [Tiny car with train horn]

[3] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w31s5NsoOyg

[4] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLfD1AFsb1I

When I was commuting 60k/day on my bike in shitty suburban conditions, I used one of these instead - you get limited use per trip, but you can always fill it up with a CO2 cylinder/bike pump:

https://www.hpvelotechnik.com/en/recumbent-trikes-bikes/acce...

It is loud.

I did that, but I used battery - couldn't figure out how to hook up to the e-bike's 50v electrical system (plus the DC-DC converter with high enough current...)

So I am using LiPo 3S, 2200mAh. Works like a charm. I keep it at its storage voltage (3.7-3.8v per cell), and it hardly drained the battery (there is no paracitic drain). Whole thing was like $20.

If diy doesn’t work I’ve been using loud bicycle horn and it works great.

https://loudbicycle.com/

> because modern cars are so heavily sound-proofed they don't hear a bicycle bell anymore

Agreed. I had a supercharged V8 Jaguar that I could barely hear.

And my Audi has a system that actually pumps engine noise into the cabin, so you can hear that, but not the outside world.

The Fire Department I was at was looking at "thumpers" - augmentations to sirens that make cars in front of them vibrate (a la those people playing too much bass too loud).

Not just sound proofing, but inattentiveness. I've been behind people on semi-rural quiet roads with my 40,000lb fire engine behind them, lights, sirens, and airhorns, and they've driven for a mile or two completely oblivious.

> I bought a 12v car horn yesterday with the intent of wiring it into my ebike's power supply

Putting an aerosol fog horn (available from boating supply shops) in the bikes water bottle holder is much simpler, louder and more effective.

if you ever want an upgrade look into nautilus air horns. I had one on my 250cc Vespa that would clear an intersection.

Needs like 18 amps if that tells you anything.

for your safety, when people hear a car horn, they’re going to be looking for a car.

I had a digital bell from aliexpress on my winter commuter because pogies on the bars prevented a typical dinger. It was very annoying and very effective; my wife referred to it as "the friend maker".

on the rare occasions where I need to loudly indicate my presence to a motor vehicle I wouldn't really want to be moving my hands - if I have time to move a hand to a horn I probably have time to brake/manouvre instead.

Generally in those situations I shout really loudly at the driver, and in general they seem to hear me

Squeeze horns are usually loud enough to be heard by cars in my experience.

Right? This feels like an "arms race" similar to scraping vs. anti-scraping; countermeasures will be developed, likely due to the action of actors entirely disconnected from what you're doing, but to block something else in the ecosystem... and you'll need to re-engineer your approach entirely. Rinse and repeat.

(The amount of innovation in anti-anti-scraping that's resulted from "sneaker bots" - automated scalping of limited-edition shoe releases - is astounding, and somewhat relevant here in how an environment can become adversarial in ways that impact broad ecosystems. I suppose the equivalent here would be environmental ads that seek to penetrate noise-cancellation in a similar way.)

I suppose, though, that all this is good news for a company that wants to turn your bicycle bell into a subscription product!

Me too, as soon as I saw this I put on my Anker Soundcore noise-cancelling earbuds and fired up my AAS Multiphonics CV-3 software synthesizer. Sweeping a sine oscillator, there was zero difference in perceived volume in the 750-780 Hz range.

Right. From the article:

Through acoustic testing, the research team identified a narrow frequency band – a “safety gap” – capable of penetrating ANC headphone filters. This range lies between 750 and 780 Hz.

Is there a standard specifying this "safety band"? Is whatever Apple does for AirPods a de-facto standard?

The construction site next door is using those vehicles, and they're also a lot more pleasant throughout the day. It's easier to tune out white noise than beeping. The first cshh is a little louder than the others, which is a nice design touch.

On my wh-1000xm2, wh-1000xm3, wf-1000xm4 and lastly wf-1000xm5, there is a quite high frequency pitch (usually coincides with some public transport beeps, and some accidental squeaking of doors) that toggles ANC to transparent mode automatically. I remember reading something about this on Sony's support website.

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Any innovation benefiting cyclists and coming from the auto industry is a way to move attention away from the fact that cars are the most dangerous thing on the road.

To be fair, I think Prime Air is real, but I've only heard about it when they've had drone crashes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGdOpR-Mv-E

AFAIK it's only available in a few very specific places (seemingly for good reason).

I love these types of videos because they create this fiction of how design happens, where people sit around a table with drawings and or come up with beautiful mock-ups (the motion sickness glasses is a good example). Often, a lot of design decisions are super obvious and don't require a lot of sweat and collaboration to come up with, but in videos they're made to appear very difficult as it presents better. And other things are super messy, but you're not going to show that as it's hard to communicate.

There's at least a paper to download: https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2026/04/Skoda-DuoBell-Resea...

I'm not sure IBM Smart Ads were ever an actual product/invention, and Prime Air is a live service (albeit geographically limited): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime_Air

I think you nailed it. You can't even buy this bike bell, as far as I can see.

probably. i am pretty sure you can spin up a CFAA violation with some string and 2 cups.

Be careful with that because then bikers are just going to start using car horns.

hey, if they can prosecute for whistling into a handset...

A horn or bell is mostly for telling other people "hey I'm here, stay out of my way and dont suddenly cross into my path"

My opinion as a cyclist is that I should basically only be using my bell on pedestrians when the pedestrians are wandering onto the bike lane. If im cycling through a shared space, I find it extremely rude to ring the bell, because it feels like I'm telling people to get out of my way, but they have just as much right to a shared path as I do. Some cyclists ring their bells because they're worried a pedestrian might suddenly turn into their path, but I think if one is concerned about that, it's a sign youre cycling too fast, and should just slow down.

With cars, I will sometimes proactively ring my bell at them if I think they're not sufficiently aware enough of me though.

Bicycle bells are mostly for warning pedestrians when approaching from behind and passing on shared-use trails. I ride on shared infrastructure and cannot afford to build new infrastructure when my town will not. Not warning a pedestrian when approaching from behind introduces the possibility of collision if the pedestrian makes a sudden change in his walking course. I typically use this etiquette:

Passing a single pedestrian or runner on a quiet day: no bell, coasting for a short bit with a loud free hub (the rotating ratchet element on the rear wheel) alerts the pedestrian to my presence.

Passing a runner: normal ring from a distance so they have knowledge that the bicycle is passing

Passing a cyclist: one loud ring from a distance

Passing a pedestrian walking a dog: two loud rings, one far, one close, so that the pedestrian is aware of the approaching bicycle and he can prevent his dog from running at me/colliding. Many dogs do seem to enjoy a bicycle chase.

Antisocial pedestrians (i.e., walking side-by-side such as to be blocking the path in both directions, preventing the bicyclist from passing): several loud rings of the bell until the antisocial activity has abated. Announcements in my local tongue (not English) that they impede the flow of traffic.

I've been a cyclist in SF and in Amsterdam, both for many years.

In SF I used my bell much more aggressively. It was mainly for cars, if I'm in or entering their blind spot and my spidey sense tells me they are considering an action that places me in danger. For example, we all know when driving when the car in front of us is thinking about merging, even before they indicate (often I feel like I know before they do). I also used it for pedestrians stepping out into the street who are maybe looking past me for oncoming cars but somehow don't see me, or when approaching 'blind' situations like a sharp corner, a driver pulling out of a driveway but there is a tree between us, delivery drivers stepping out from their truck, etc. I can't say how many accidents have been prevented (the person may have eventually looked and seen me), but I can say that my bell has triggered people to look and see me earlier than they were going to had I not rang it.

In Amsterdam my bell is used much more sparingly. It's mostly for tourists stepping into (or considering stepping into) the bike lane. If they are already in the bike lane, I almost always prefer just to slow down a bit and dodge them, as ringing the bell often triggers a deer-caught-in-headlight moment or erratic behavior, which increases the chance of an accident or that I have to come to a full stop. The other situation is to express dissatisfaction at cars blocking bike lanes, cars/bikes not yielding, drivers blocking intersections, or other dangerous behavior. This isn't preventing an accident but I'd argue it is still important, as social control affects how often we make bad decisions. Outside the city I also use my bell to let other cyclists know I'm passing.

So yeah, I'd say bells prevent accidents, but obviously not as well as good biking infrastructure, where pedestrians, bikes, and cars have clear separate spaces, and visibility of cyclists to drivers is high.

It's not only about preventing accidents (but I do believe it prevents some to attempt answering your question).

It's also about signaling to someone that they might be doing something wrong or they might not be paying attention. For pedestrians it takes significantly less time and distance to stop, for cars, trams, and bicycles, it takes longer.

It happens all the time that pedestrians don't know the customs of a country, they don't recognize bike lines... in that case the cyclists do not need to pump the breaks anytime a clueless tourist gets in front of them... they can ring the bell, signaling:

"yo, it's not how we do it here, please watch out, I'm coming full speed and you are in the wrong, so please look up from your phone and stop right there".

I also had the luck to meet some people thinking they can be on their phone while cycling, drifting into my lane, etc... In that case, a bell is also adequate

"hey, please stop writing a text message while you are on your bike blazing through the city, you are driving as if you were drunk, pay attention please and stop multitasking (you moron)"

If nothing works to change their behavior, of course I'll try my best and hit the brakes safely, but I'd prefer they learned how to move around in the city safely.

> Do horns and bells really prevent accidents?

They absolutely do, for indirect reasons:

> Generally it's a lot easier just to press the brake

Maybe easier, but it hardly seems fair, nor realistic.

With a bit of experience, you can tell when pedestrians are likely to stumble onto the bike lane without looking. Then you have two choices: Significantly reduce your speed, or ring your bell first and only reduce speed if they still haven't noticed the oncoming bike.

If you only reduce speed, you'll be traveling at a very low average speed, and time is money (especially for bike delivery workers, but I also hate having to sharply decelerate for people glued to their screen or otherwise completely unaware of their surroundings even if I'm not in a rush), so you can take a guess as to whether "just reducing your speed" is practicable.

A car company wanting to divert attention away from the carnage cars cause. Seems a bit suspicious no?

> In order for e.g. a horn to work you need enough time that the driver processes the situation and decides the horn will communicate something AND enough time for the pedestrian or whatever to process that and react to it. Generally it's a lot easier just to press the brake, and more importantly be travelling at a speed and in a manner where the brake is sufficient

I have seen a small kid jump from his father's scooter just when I was overtaking them and they decided to stop because he had seen his grandpa or whoever was that old guy on the other side of the bike lane. His father managed to stop him by grabbing his sweater because I had rung my bell a few seconds before he decided to stop but the kid ended up inches from my bicycle. It was at very low speed, almost walking speed yet hitting a bicycle handlebars head first because you turn around without looking still hurts even if the bicycle his stopped.

There are a lot of runners on mixed use paths wearing headphones these days. They are an absolute danger to overtaking bikes. A bell they would hear would be useful.

horns & bells are for pedestrians IME, not cars.

>> properly segregated infrastructure for each class of vehicle.

I ride a lot in traffic and the problem with segregated infrastructure (i.e. bike lanes) is the interfaces and constriction. Pedestrians step off the sidewalk or out of cars into constrained bike lanes all the time and there's no where to go; cars turn across bike lanes with the same problem.

You can't always do it, but if you can eliminate the speed differential I believe riding in traffic is much safer than a bike lane, at least until you get enough bike volume to keep drivers aware. THat's hard to do in most of NA or year round.

"Do horns and bells really prevent accidents?"

If you are a sane person, absolutely not!! You _try_ the bell, if people react, then you go. Many times it just confuses people or people ignore it.

If you are a high-speed maniac and _rely_ on the bell to clear a path for you... then yeah. But you are then also likely to take great risks in general and will probably be in other accidents...

You're right, it's certainly not the primary way to prevent accidents. But it helps at the edges, which seems worthwhile.

That's assuming the bells aren't abused too badly, which is a mixed bag, but mostly true.

Bells don’t work on cars, I’ve been using this in SF and motorists respond very quickly

https://loudbicycle.com/

They certainly can, yes. Many crashes can be avoided if both parties slam on the brakes or swerve, not not quite if only one does. Also they're useful in parking lots when some dumbass is about to back right into you.

I concur. Even the best bell in the world may be utterly useless if the pedestrian happens to be deaf. Also, bicycle bells tend to polarise pedestrians - some people think that bells are rude and insisting that peds get out of the way and other people think it's dangerous and rude to not use a bell every time you overtake.

My solution is to still have a tiny bell on my road bike, but instead of using it, call out something like "can I get past, please?" or if an immediate response is required (e.g. ped blindly stepping into the road ahead of me) then yelling "Oi!" can really surprise them and make them notice you. I'm also a fan of using "Beep, beep" if a ped is on cycle infrastructure (active travel infrastructure is probably a better term) and I want to pretend that I'm an impatient driver.

I think the human voice is far superior to a bell as you can tailor the message for the situation and you don't have to move a hand away from the brakes to do so. (Using your voice is also a very good idea when approaching a horse and rider - horses know about humans and don't get freaked out if you call ahead "Morning!" or something cheery and appropriate).

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Writing as a regular cyclist, the other side is seemingly always the problem.

Cars, cyclists, pedestrians, each of them thinks they are right and other side is wrong.

Two of the three clips clearly show a bike-lane blocked by pedestrians. The third looks like a shared space - but blocked in a way where it seems reasonable to ask for space by ringing the bell?

> the "stronger" road user is at fault unless proven otherwise

In general I agree with this, but a lot a lot depends on how "unless proven otherwise" is interpreted.

If a driver is typically at fault when a pedestrian or cyclist unexpectedly moves into their path then it seems like that practically restricts cars to speeds close to biking or walking in many cities.

Similarly, if a cyclist is typically at fault when a pedestrian unexpectedly moves into their path then it seems like that restricts bikes to speeds close to walking in many cities.

This effectively pedestrianizes car lanes and bike lanes which would be lovely in some areas, but it also restricts travel to walking speeds which also has downsides if enforced across an entire city.

Edit: after reading the post at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-highway-code-8-change... the guidance seems to strike a reasonable balance:

> People cycling, riding a horse or driving a horse-drawn vehicle should respect the safety of people walking in these spaces, but people walking should also take care not to obstruct or endanger them.

Political cyclists hate this because they think anybody who complains is just a car driver concern trolling, but having been hit by a cyclist I can attest to it being a real problem. Sure I wasn't in real risk of dying, but I was bruised and scraped up for a week after that. I've done my fair share of road cycling in my years, I don't do it now but I still cycle on trails. The way some cyclists push back on any criticism at all is very ideological, and a real problem for not just pedestrians (and drivers) but cyclists too, because the outspoken attitudes and public stunts of political cyclists breed a lot of contempt for cyclists broadly speaking, to the point where normies groan when I say I spent my weekend going on a trip with my bike, and still act weird when I explain I was on a rail-to-trail not clogging up a highway.

Years ago, SF pedestrians took care of this problem by punching bicyclists until they stopped riding their bicycles on the sidewalk.

I think this is a really bad idea unless paired with some regime that penalizes inappropiate use of alarms - and most societies don't treat noise pollution as a real problem. For example, people honk all the time even when there are no safety issues. Or have misconfigured home/car alarms. Outlawing using ANC for blocking "fake alarms" only makes the problem worse.

With all the road noise and now noise makers required even for silent EVs, noise cancelling headphones are the last resort for people to get some relief from the constant noise pollution in cities.

And now you want to take that away too? No thanks. I get safety is important, but so is relief from noise pollution. Noise pollution is very damaging to your health. There needs to be a balance, and currently the safety police are weighing the scales inappropriately low.

I don't know… If I'm sitting at home or at a cafe working, I want my headphones to block all bicycle bells and ambulances on the street. Those in traffic could perhaps just turn their ANC off?

We can't even prevent radio advertisers from playing sirens.

as soon they do that all kind of companies will start abusing it, for example the sound of all smart phone notification will use exactly that frequency

Regular alarm sounds already do that, because above 1kHz or so it's the cushioning in the device that does the majority of the cancelling. There's a dip in effectiveness before that because to cancel noise effectively it's best to have a latency lower than a quarter of the wave's period.

Also ANC works best on wide-spectrum sounds, so any kind of siren or the cries of a child will go through, as the spectrum is a series of narrow peaks.

The real safety move is to not put yourself in situations where you're going to collide with the least dangerous class of commuters.

In theory that sounds nice, but I suspect it would be much harder to make work in practice than it seems

However, deaf people are allowed to drive, cycle, walk etc. so sound won't always work anyway.

Ha, I had the same idea before I realized it’ll just be used for ads. It would be cool for pilots’ announcements on a flight, or approaching stations on the train etc. But CVS will use it to tell you to download their app and enroll in ExtraCare Rewards. Or “Did you know you may be due for more than fourteen vaccines all at no cost to you?”

this sounds like an amazing idea, the govt should introduce laws so that the companies do this

The presentation looks like marketing overkill, their solution looks pretty simple. It‘s just two trills „Trillerwerk“ bells combined. It was the standard in Germany until the late 1990s https://youtu.be/-mW7dWHDivo

when the alternative is "everyone doing the right thing" this solution starts to look like the pragmatic approach

Over-engineering? It's a fully mechanical bike bell that's made slightly differently. It's a very established and straightforward technology.

The real problem is that cyclists and pedestrians apparently in some countries share space commonly enough that this is necessary?

In the Netherlands, bicycle utopia, I cannot remember the last time I used my bell to alert a pedestrian of my existence. Granted, I never cycle in Amsterdam, but that is a special location where high-powered ship horns are probably required.

Regarding ANC, I naturally turn it off while cycling on my Bose Quiet Comfort II, as the ANC will try (and fail) to cancel the noise from the wind. I don't think this is a solved problem? So for bicycle-to-bicycle alerting, this also seems overkill.

What's your easy technical solution to improve common sense, then? Or is it the all time classic of "just improving society"? I'm all ears for your ideas.

The problem is the cyclist trying to overtake pedestrian on sidewalk faster. The cyclist paying for it is correct person paying for it.

I say it as cyclist. Pedestrians have right to be absent minded in parks and on public sidewalks.

I have to agree here. The amount of cyclists I see with full over the ear headphones on-- if these guys are blarning tunes, there is no way they'll every hear the traffic around them. Extremely dangerous.

I completely disagree, this is just another level of safety.

If everything went perfectly everytime we wouldn't need any safety equipment, but things aren't always perfect.

What is the right problem that should be solved here?

Agreed, however, what do you think about my 'dream bicycle bell'?

I replaced my bell recently because mine had developed a form of 'tourettes' after a bit of plastic fell off. So I did survey the marketplace for something 'more me'.

This made me think about what the ideal bell should be. I reckon that you should be able to buy tuned bells, as in A - G with 440hz 'C' being in there somewhere. Maybe there could be different colours of the rainbow for each frequency.

This would be quite tuneful if I was riding with family or friends, with them also having a tuned bell on their bicycles.

Obviously no use for penetrating noise cancelling headphones, however, I don't think these are an issue. If someone is zoned out on headphones then it is on them if they have no spacial awareness. If they don't hear the bell, then that is on them.

I also think big auto is patronising, to think they have anything to offer the cyclist apart from death and pollution. What would the car dependent ones know about shared path etiquette?

Nowadays the biggest danger to me on shared paths are the Uber Eats delivery guys with their electric motorbikes. Early evenings can be quite risky with those zombies, particularly within half a mile of a McDonalds. They pose a true 'kinetic' risk that the jogger wearing headphones does not.

which part would you consider overengineered?

Eh, it's pragmatic.

It's replacing a problem you can't solve (human stupidity), with one you can (a better bell).

Not sure I understand your criticism.

Yes, bike bells are for pedestrians to hear.

Problem: Pedestrians today wear ANC noise cancelling, thus being unable to hear approaching bikes' bells.

Skoda: We made a bell with a frequency usually not cancelled by ANC, so these pedestrians still hear it.

Sounds reasonable to me.

It may have been intentional. More than one suicide by train has involved the person who died by suicide wearing headphones as they walked on the tracks (it was clear that it was a suicide and not intentional as engineers have reported the person looking at the train when the horn was sounded but not leaving the tracks).

I would love that but not so much for pedestrians as for cars that don't see me on my bike. Ideally, the "bell" would automatically honk at them very loudly when they get too close.

I carry air horn and stick. But I am pedestrian.

what

I use the loud bicycle horn on my daily rider, it’s excellent. Car drivers actually respect it. Prevents right hooks

Or this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000ACAMJC (compressed air).

I've periodically toyed with the idea of adding a locomotive horn to my motorized vehicle, but I'd be afraid that using it would cause an accident.

Not entirely the same in Norway, but the rule as written is roughly translated "Sound signal: A bike should have a bell. Other signalling devices are prohibited".

Doesn't stop me from using an AirZound or digital airhorn. Saved me countless times. Like a bell is heard by a driver blasting their stereo while checking their phone, slowly veering into the cycle lane.

Really? I would have guessed you could argue that it qualifies as „one signal giving device“ since it is one single piece of equipment (ie the horn in a car also has many parts, but it‘s presumably fine) and also that it „only produces one constant sound“, where that sound is composed of different frequencies (again, car horns probably don‘t have a pure tone in Denmark either, right?).

Non of those laws are enforced, ever. Even if you get stopped by police. When have you last seen a bike with all the mandetory reflectors?

> and of course the mild hearing loss that accompanies _any_ frequent headphone usage

curious, you got any citations for this claim?

Same reason I listen to music or podcasts in the car.

I am very lucky to live in a city/country where risks of theft from my person is low - when I lived for 20 years in London I never once felt unsafe listening to music.

The closest was two young men got very close to me on the tube, when I was playing on my brand new Hong Kong imported PSP - but I just took my headphones off. I think they were just interested as most people hadn't seem one in the flesh yet.

I can't say I know of anyone personally who suffered theft or accident caused by them listening to music on headphones.

When I cycled a lot, I had a small speaker strapped to my handlebars rather than wearing headphones, as I liked being able to hear cars around me - but when I was younger I regularly cycled in headphones, and was still able to hear enough of the road around me to not feel that I was missing anything.

Remember, we don't make drivers drive around with no music and their windows open, so that they are better able to hear cyclists...

I know a few people that simply wear headphones to help with managing sensory overload, so I wouldn't assume that having headphones on is a guarantee of listening to something (though still likely to be strongly correlated).

As far as assailants, a skilled ninja wouldn't be detected even if their target weren't wearing headphones...

It's a definitive statement that you don't want to talk to people. In London not wearing headphones ironically means you become a target for people who want your attention. And it blocks out the otherwise very loud cityscape.

Many neurodivergent people are simply overwhelmed by the sound on the streets

Are you really living your life walking around thinking about the next assailant?!

Must be terrifying.

I assumed this bell was for alerting pedestrians or other cyclists wearing noise cancelling headphones.

> Draw a line, say this is for bicycles, pedestrians and cars have no business here, and bikes have no business being on any other lane as long as these exist.

This is the reality in many cities, if it weren't for the hopefully not surprising fact that people don't always obey traffic laws perfectly.

> Hey, we just solved 90% of the accidents.

No, you didn't. And restricting cyclists and pedestrians will not result in even small dent in the numbers of maimed or killed people in traffic. It's one mode of transport that's responsible for the vast amount of it, and that's the motorized one propelling several tonnes.

> and bikes have no business being on any other lane as long as these exist

And cars have no business being on other roads as long as highways exist ;)

This only leaves open how to enforce all of it without everybody shouting domestic terror.

If "shouldn't" worked we'd have no industrial accidents without any safety measures, no unwanted pregnancies and in general would more or less achieve heaven on Earth.

Unfortunately, the UK seems almost incapable of building usable cycle infrastructure (possibly excepting London). Your idea is just a recipe for magic protective paint and even more abuse of cyclists who don't want to be forced to use ridiculously badly designed infrastructure. e.g. Here in Bristol, we have an infamous shared cycle/pedestrian pavement along Coronation Rd that has a few trees completely blocking the cycle side which just means conflict between pedestrians and cyclists who have to fight over the scraps left over from motorists taking most of the space (https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4462522,-2.6064792,3a,75y,80...).

You can turn up your car stereo and mow over pedestrians undisturbed in your two ton death machine yet I'm not allowed to cycle on a bicycle-only path with with a podcast and transparency mode enabled? For my own safety? Safety from car drivers that fell asleep driving with their stereo on?

I find the "Heard five seconds earlier, the difference between a serious collision and stepping aside" take hilarious. As if there is no other way to prevent a collision in five seconds other than the pedestrian getting out of the way.

As much as I get the urge to plow through pedestrians on bike paths (and stay proudly in the way of bikes on pedestrian paths), in real life, normal people don't do that kind of thing. Bikes have brakes for a reason.

absolutely filled with misleading "science" and outright lies, so they can charge a premium for a bell.

If only people had spatial awareness, they would look around vs listening to their phone changing directions randomly while walking. The bell is for both persons safety.

>They could make huge improvements in safety by actively preventing the use of illegally modified e-bikes that travel too fast.

Or by regulating bicycle food delivery services so thatheir employees' continued employment and wage magnitude doesn't hinge quite so thoroughly on how rapidly they deliver.

I need a noise canceller canceller canceller.

Same here, surprised that only you mentioned it here.

And seems to sound like a normal bell, or maybe that's just my ears. I guess I can see why they didn't put it up front, but that was also all I wanted.

So you don't even need Android or iOS for this feature and it's been a thing on certain headsets for a while; both my Sony headphones and buds do this.

It also has an integration with the phone which can add GPS awareness but it works fine without it in my experience.

Noise cancelling headphones while riding a motorbike is… a choice. Do you also wear a blindfold?

I bought a nice ding dong bell for my bike, and pedestrians seem to notice it a lot more than the nastier sounding bells.

That's the interesting bit. Is this a known / agreed upon feature of ANC headphones or just a property of a specific iteration of let's say airpods?

it is quote common family name in Czechia, my daughter's classmate has this family name as well

same with most of the Japanese car brands or even Citroen, Peugeot...

It's not about the cyclists wearing ANC headsets (which is already prohibited at least in Euro countries), but about pedestrians wearing them. Another problem altogether.

In effect they are, even if not directly. There are requirements to stay aware of your surroundings. If you cause an accident by blocking all sounds, I totally can see insurance companies claiming this is your own responsibility and refusing to cover.

It is of course prohibited in many jurisdictions. it's just not enforceable.

This is more aimed to warn pedestrians who wear ANC headphones. Should people be prohibited from wearing headphones while walking?

It is pedestrian who are wearing the ANC to remove the noise outside.

Bike bells are useful for me most weekends to let me know there's a bike soon to overtake me while I'm skating.

Headphones on folks while they're out walking is ridiculous and antisocial and if they get hit because they didn't hear a bell then they had it coming. I only use a single earbud at a time so I don't lose my situational awareness entirely, but even that can still wash out the rest of the world noise pretty well.

I don't know where you're from, but in Germany for example, there are countless situations where cyclists and pedestrians share the same space, or pedestrians can (or just do…) cross bicycle lanes. I'm a very law-abiding cyclist since witnessing a few horrible accidents, and yet I encounter situations with headphone-wearing pedestrians regularly. Often I'll ring my bell to no avail, until driving right up to them, and they still won't hear me. This is really frustrating; I'm definitely in the market for this.

A lot of footpaths in Europe are designated paths that are shared with cyclists

As a cyclist in London, I’ve hit one pedestrian: they stepped backward(!) into a cycle lane. I had nowhere to go, as there was a curb on the other side. Pedestrian behaviour is just totally wild with respect to cycle lanes, a lot of them are just totally oblivious. If you cycle, you will come across people walking along or stepping into dedicated cycle lanes several times during the average commute.

At least here in Austria, I honestly rarely, if ever, see them do that. Either roads or dedicated/mixed designated cycle paths. We do have enforcement even against cyclists, though more than anything, that catches all the "unlocked" e-bikes, because cycling on the sidewalks is not a thing anyone does.

Even with bikes being off the sidewalk, there is need for a quick way of getting others pedestrians attention.

e.g.: In Amsterdam you cross biking lanes to cross the roads sometimes, or bike lanes and sidewalks are so integrated, you can wander into them without noticing.

Being tired in a crowded street in rainy weather doesn't help either.

This is always an odd one, as it’s the people who look like they just found a bike in a skip and decided to ride around here that cycle on the pavements.

I'm often a pedestrian and I've been known to walk into the road where there are bikes and cars also.

What if they are shared?

not all of them do

Edit 2: I originally didn’t think of the case when you want to warn pedestrians that you are passing (without asking them to give way) in case they decide to switch direction without looking if there is any incoming entities. That seems legitimate to me. Although giving a wide enough berth might be better than doing it routinely (that could amount to a lot of noise eventually).

Edit: Since people seem to go either way: It is my understanding that in my part of the world (in Scandinavia) cyclists do not have the right of way on sidewalks (which means they can’t bell people away). They also (and I know this one) do not have the right of way while cycling across road crossings. Something that most cyclists, in my experience, violate all the time.

Quite. It drives me up the wall when cyclists not only use the sidewalk close enough to me to practically graze me (pedestrian), but expect me to actively pay attention and yield to them. Use the road, dummy (there are scarce few bicycle lanes).

I use regular headphones (not over-ear and not really noise canc.) on the sidewalk but take them off when I am crossing the street. And I of course am mindful of other pedestrians. But I’m not gonna take them off because some two-wheeler thinks they can ram into me unless I jump out of the way on the sidewalk.

Well, sure, as soon as infrastructure exists so the alternative isn't "get run over by a homicidal driver". And actual infrastructure, not painted lines that typically get filled up with double-parking cars.

this was not really an issue before food delivery apps came into fashion

btw. kids up until certain age can pretty much in all countries ride bike legally on sidewalk, are there any countries where 8yo can't ride bike on sidewalk?

Agreed. Make bike paths and people cycle on bike paths. Crazy stuff I know!

I think I’d prefer AI slop comments to comments like this.

In Germany we have rules, and one of those rules is that pedestrians on the sidewalk who are in the cyclepath (usually a too-subtle red stone) do, in fact, have to get out of the way for cyclists.

I imagine there's also a rule about directing airhorns against law abiding cyclists.

There’s more than one issue. It’s not wrong to try to solve one of them.

Some people wear them there.

Or could sell it on eBay for an amount of money that's nontrivial from POV of a gig economy worker.

If this bell gets through ANC then yes it will help people with ANC. It's not an all or nothing situation, you hear it further away for each increase in loudness.

Also, ANC let's you reduce your music volume for the same signal to noise ratio.

Every single person that stops and looks due to this is a win in my book.

You probably should not be living in a city then.

It wouldn't be a problem if pedestrians weren't blocking cycling paths completely while apparently forgetting their hearing aids at home. Some people have even less situational awareness than common sense.

E.g. in Germany many pedestrians, especially tourists, tend to think that bycicle lanes are fancily-painted sidewalks

More or less at the time when electric bicycles weighing over 20kg and moving over 30kmh started to drive on sidewalks, I started to avoid living in big cities.