City cyclists who battle to get themselves noticed on the roads can now buy the ultimate deterrent against inattentive truck drivers; a bicycle equipped with a horn that is louder than Concorde.
With renewed interest in bike-sharing schemes around the world, how best to promote this new way of travelling to the young? According to COGOO, a smartphone-operated bike-sharing service currently being developed at Yokohama National University, the answer is BMX-controlled music that mixes well with street culture and is fun to play.
The latest weapon in the war against bike thieves is the SpyBike GPS tracker – a device the size of a tube of Smarties that fits inside a bicycle’s steering column and can track its whereabouts anywhere in the world.
While it’s understandable that cyclists today feel conditions on the road can only improve, on this day 110 years ago the risk posed by ‘modern-day highwaymen’ was such that cyclists were being advised to use the late-nineteenth-century version of a super soaker water pistol to startle their attacker.
The Cycle to Work scheme has survived the taxman’s decision last year that allowing employees to buy cheap bikes for commuting was too generous.