Bret is a mate of mine who had his car written off by a bicycle. It was coming down a long hill and its rider didn’t know rim brakes don’t work in the wet. The bike rocketed through a stop sign and onto the intersection at full tilt and hit Bret’s little Renault at the front passenger’s door, flipping its rider over to land on his back on the car’s roof.
It cushioned his fall nicely and landed him upright and on his feet on the other side of the car. He wasn’t even scratched.
Meanwhile the Renault had a redesigned fender and door, and the roof was caved in. It was eight years old and the insurance company figured it wasn’t worth saving.
Of course, Bret emerged as the bad guy of the encounter for no other reason than that he was in a car.
Needless to say he has a view on cyclists. I’ve explained to him that cyclists always win the PR war because they wind up maimed and bleeding while pursuing their innocent, healthy lifestyles while selfish, crazed motorists who can’t be delayed a single second maliciously run them down and disappear over the horizon laughing fiendishly. Motorists are all the same.
Now I have to tell him there are bicycle computers that make and receive rider’s telephone calls and texts, meaning the cyclists’ moral high ground will extend even further onto the road space as riders do all that neat, diverting phone stuff while riding.
Magellan has announced a software update for its Cyclo 500 computers providing on-screen call and text message alerts from smartphones, and wireless control of the music stored
on them.
“We are always looking for new ways to improve the cycling life of Australians and these cool one-of-kind features do just that,” said Paris Basson, a brand manager at Magellan.
The phone features work with Apples and Androids via Bluetooth 4.0. They alert the cyclist to incoming calls and display text messages on the screen mounted on the handlebars. There is caller-ID and calls can be routed through a Bluetooth headset.
Cyclists can also play, stop and pause music from their smartphones and receive turn-by-turn instructions from the phone’s navigation software.
It’s encouraging to note the Magellan software also includes an emergency feature that sends a text message to cyclists’ nominated contacts advising of their exact location, providing
an address and latitude and longitude
(always handy).
This means that, when cyclists encounter difficulties as a result of interacting with the phone rather than their fellow road users, someone can come by and rescue them. But this works only with Androids; Apple users must sort through about four billion apps to find something similar.
The new features are available as a free software update for existing owners of Cyclo 500 computers, while new Cyclos carrying the software are available from $379 to $479.
