Transcriber: Bob Prottas Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
Show of hands.
How many people in the audience ride a bike weekly?
Weekly, at least once a week.
OK, now how many people in the audience own a bicycle?
(Laughter)
OK, you've got it. I don't need to give a talk. Thanks.
(Laughter)
So this is a unique situation that we have in America.
About a third of us own a bicycle,
yet only about 1% of all trips made in America
are by bike.
So, we all know the benefits of riding a bike.
I'm going to speak to them briefly, they probably deserve their own talk.
But just from the health perspective,
lowers your risk of cardiovascular disease,
lowers the number of sick days you'll take at work.
From a space efficiency stand point which is City 2.0 important.
This is 60 people in cars, on bikes, and on a bus.
To give you an idea of volume.
Next time you're in traffic, count how may cars you see.
That's how many people are around you. It's actually shockingly small.
From an energy efficiency standpoint,
it takes 50 to 80 times more energy to travel the same distance
in a car as it does on a bike.
From a sustainability standpoint there's obviously no gas tank
and the only CO2 emissions you create are the ones you exhale.
And most importantly it's fun.
This might be the purist expression of joy that you can find.
So, if these were the only reasons, we'd all be riding our bikes.
Well, we're not. And why?
There's a number of surveys who try to figure it out.
Here's one that shows some of the most common responses.
Car traffic, weather, lack of bike lanes, darkness.
Now what do all these things have in common?
Concern for personal safety.
And it's funny because ---
and I'm not here to fear monger,
bicycling is actually quite safe.
It's only second to flying in a commercial airline,
which you might be surprised is the most safe.
And obviously you don't want
to ride a motorcycle or scuba dive wherever you need to go.
That being said, compared to the rest of the world,
it's not so safe in the US to ride a bike.
You're 5 times more likely
to have a fatal accident in the US than the Netherlands, for example.
And, while we make up 1% of all trips,
we contribute 2% of all fatalities.
So, how can we fix this?
Well, the number one thing we can do is infrastructure.
And that's something that the government can do.
Europe has done a great job of this.
We're actually just starting to really make a move one it
and it's pretty exciting.
Citybike, which I'm sure you guys have heard of,
was a big bike share program in New York.
They also have them in Chicago now.
And San Francisco just got them, to name a few.
As well as a lot of infrastructure investments.
LA is actually one that was more publicized.
So what's the problem with it?
Well, it's a great solution.
It just takes time to do.
In fact, Europe has been doing it since the 70's.
So it's been taking a number of decades to get where they're at.
How can we speed it along?
And this is where I think we can really make a good contribution.
And that is the industry side.
So, let's create a demand for them to create more infrastructure.
Let's get over that hump of fear
that stops us from riding our bikes.
And this is something that I personally had some experience in.
It's really why I'm here.
About two years ago
I was riding my bike home from work at night.
Going through a very dark stretch of road
with my dinky little headlight
and maybe you've experienced this,
last minute, don't even see this pothole coming,
nearly knocks me off the front of my bike.
And it jumpstarted me into thinking,
"Man, I need a better headlight".
(Laughter)
But more importantly,
I didn't want to go and just buy a brighter headlight,
which is the standard operation.
I felt like a handlebar mounted headlight was inherently misguided.
Why is the light so high up if what I'm trying to light up
is out in front of my wheel?
So, I did some research.
How did we get to this point?
Well, here's a modern headlight.
Point source of light.
Focus is forward.
Looks remarkable like this,
which is probably one of the first headlights.
This was --- (Laughter)
If you were around in the late 1800's
you used a carbide lamp like this,
which was pretty much cutting edge technology.
Stay with me here.
There's a canister at the bottom.
It holds little stones of calcium carbide.
The little thing up on top is the a bulb that holds water.
The thumbscrew allows small drips to drip down on the calcium carbide.
Chemical reaction starts making acetylene gas.
That heads up into the lens assembly
where it's burned and it's white and it's bright
and it's wind resistant and it's rain resistant.
Why would you not want this?
Well, maybe if you don't want a chamber
creating high pressure acetylene gas
(Laughter)
right by your face (Laughter)
might be a reason.
Understandably, incandescence came along and so did LEDs.
We have all these great improvements, but we're still going to stick
with a small light on our handlebars or on our headtube.
Now, contrast that with cars.
What have they done in that same amount of time?
So here's Cadillac CTS 2014.
What's interesting to see is just
the design effort that went into this.
It's a wrap around headlight. You can be seen from the side.
It has integrated signaling.
It has daytime running lights.
You can see where you're going, obviously.
And from this perspective bike lights seem kind of silly.
I mean you don't park your car
and take your headlights off,
put them in your back pack, you don't want them to get stolen.
And you have to go buy headlights after you buy your car.
I forgot to charge my batteries.
Looks like I'm driving home in the dark tonight.
(Laughter)
This is a great comic by Bikeyface.
I recommend it.
Motivation, so now I said
OK, I'm going to make an improvement here.
I'm going to make a better headlight.
But I'm going to do it by moving the light where it's needed.
Make it more efficient.
And I saw that as the wheel.
Now obviously putting a headlight on the wheel
is pretty tricky because it's spinning.
How do you focus light?
Well, I had an idea. What if you could time ---
What if you distributed lights all the way around the wheel
and timed it to face ---
to turn the lights on only when
they were needed facing forward?
I like building stuff, so I said I'll try it.
So here it is in all its glory.
This is the first wheel-mounted headlight.
What does that look like when it's operating?
That's probably better?
You can see the projection of the light.
It's pretty exciting.
So I'm riding around on this prototype and I'm loving it.
And suddenly I notice something else
and this really where the importance comes.
This arc of light made me hugely visible.
Visibility is a bit deal if you've ever ridden your bike at night.
Based on this, I did some more research
because I wanted to know how big of a deal is visibility?
Well, this is a standard bicycle headlight and taillight setup
projecting light forward so you can see,
rear light facing backwards so you can be seen.
Well, the NHTSA does surveys on bicycle injuries
and finds that the way that they happen
about 70% can be attributed to a lack in side visibility.
Suddenly, it doesn't seem like such a smart idea not to be very visible.
On top of that,
a majority of bicycle fatalities
happen between 4 pm and 4 am.
Which is nighttime.
Couple that now with the survey that says that 1 in 5 people
said that they don't ride because of darkness
and suddenly you have something that really needs to be innovated on,
the bike light.
So, with this newfound personal discovery
I said I'm going to make a red taillight as well to match.
And this is what you get.
(Applause)
I think that this is a better approach.
But more so, I hope that this inspires
more design thinking when it comes to safety products.
So, I turned this now from just a little project I had
it's now a product.
About ten months ago we started selling it.
It's called Revolights
and we've been selling now to the world.
So, I think the lights are going to come down another level.
I can show you in the true darkness.
There you go.
(Applause)
All right.
Now get on your bikes and ride.
Hope to see you guys out there.
Thank you.
(Applause)