Riding with Cars

Safety
21

Just type “Bike Radar” on Amazon.

The Garmin Varia is about $199.

But they also have the Bryton Radar (Garmin knock-off) for $119.

You can get them on sale sometimes. All of my boards have Garmin Mounts on the back so I just buy one Garmin Radar and switch it from board to board. I also use it extensively for cycling.

I really won’t ride a bike or board without it. There are lots & lots of videos on Garmin Varia Radar on Youtube. The bottom line is: It works great. For $100-$200 bucks, IMO, it’s worth every dime.

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22

It makes my blood boil that the problem is so bad we have fucking radar for bikes.

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23

My corallary in more detail is, i do everything i can to not make enemies on the road. it’s worked out pretty good.

I do think we get a small advantage over bikes. people think we’re cooler. eventually we’ll earn a rep tho.

I’ve found:

  • if there’s cars in front of me, then cars behind me accept it the pace i’m traveling at.
  • if there’s cars leaving a gap behind me, then they tend to accept it.

Otherwise i find a way to let them pass.

some of my commute has an unprotected bike lane. I’m terrified of getting doored so i only use it to let cars pass. sometimes they just don’t pass, so i get back out in front of them and they just ride behind me.

I also don’t pass cars at stop lights unless i know i’m going to maintain a pace where they won’t end up passing me again.

If the stop light has a really long line of cars, only then will I decide to lane split my way forward. but i always leave at least a pace car between me and the light. Sometimes i only go forward enough so I make the light.

I often let people ahead of me at stop lights by pulling completely over to the curb.

Sometimes i make sure i’m the last one through the light. being at the back of a pack after a stop light is the best commuting zone with no one behind you.

I signal my intent when there are cars around. stops. turns. etc.

I stop at stop signs for cars. if they insist i go i go. otherwise i act like a car.

when i’m in the front in the right lane at a stop light, and someone has a right turn signal behind me, I will move forward and too the left so they can make their turn without waiting.

I realize this is kinda triggering subject. and people can be shit. and we remember how angry we were when they were shit. but I’ve had pretty decent luck out there.

I have had one lady randomly scream idiot at me. i’m unsure what i did that triggered her. I had teenagers scream at me to jump scare me. it worked. but afaict they weren’t triggered, just having “fun” being a-holes.

I had a guy pull in behind me on a two lane road. so I assumed he was going to turn right next light, so i got over into the left lane to let him through. (no one was around) … he pulled up beside me. and says… “NO dude you go in front, i’ll block for you, that thing is cool.” :smiley:

we’re still cooler than bikes.

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24

Stop being so reasonable!

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25

This has not been the case for me. They MUST BE IN FRONT

If I’m going the speed limit or higher on my skateboard, I act like a car in every way. That means taking up the lane, I don’t care that you wanna go 45 in a 20.

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26

This is definitely my way of thinking (really most cyclists / anyone using the street) but there are so many unhinged drivers or people not paying attention that there’s always a bit of nervousness that you’re gonna get nailed, possibly purely out of spite.

27

That’s why I don’t ride slow boards. I don’t act shitty unless I already have an escape path picked out.

28

This is a good topic. The more I ride esk8 the more I try to stay away from cars. Over the winter and lately I have mostly been off-roading so it hasn’t been an issue but now is the time of the year when I will likely find myself amongst cars again. I agree with taking up the whole lane if there is no bike lane. However I am more aware nowadays of the risk of riding in front of cars at high speed and having some kind of drivetrain or remote failure happen, or even hitting some surprise massive pothole, and going down and cars not being able to stop in time.

A customer of mine has asked me over time to put more and more lights on his board. On the back there’s a red motorcycle taillight and on the front there’s a pretty big LED headlight. Now we added a red LED strip on the back, that’s visible from rear and sides, as well as twin additional headlights on the front and each have independent switches and flasher units. The red flasher is always on but during the day he uses the front twin lights flashing as well. On top of this at night he wears a light on his helmet, one on each wrist, and one on his body. It seems totally overboard but as his wife said “if someone hits him and tries to say they didn’t see him then they are lying through their teeth!”

5 Likes
29

I take it you are only using the audible alert and not caring about the visual? I also use Garmin Varia on my bikes and have tried it on my boards in the past but haven’t used it lately. For a time I was running the Varia app on a small phone that I had strapped to my wrist so I could look and see the radar display which shows the car proximity and speed. But even the small phone was slightly annoying there.

On the topic of riding with sound in your helmet, one thing I’ve used lately with my helmets are these: https://www.aleck.io/products/aleck-punks. They allow you to hear sound and still hear everything in the surrounding environment.

30

I mean no board is gonna save you when a person guns the accelerator out of nowhere due to road rage or mental issues.

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31

It’s saved me before :man_shrugging:

But won’t always

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32

Yep. I just use audible.

We have Sena Helmets for biking and snow skiing. They have built-in intercoms and bluetooth and I just sink it to the Garmin App on my phone. Plus, communicating in real time while riding, biking, and skiing really adds to the experience.

I also have a TSG Pass Helmet and I just use the Shokz Bone Conducting Earphones in that helmet. The Shokz Earphones allow me to hear the Garmin “Ding”, but the Shokz don’t cover my ears - so I can still hear cars also.

Riding on the streets with cars adds danger to an already dangerous sport. So every bit of technology that can be used to keep us safer helps.

1 Like
33

Good for you for wearing full-face. Nowadays I am just using an MTB frame full-face so as least I have the jaw protection. I found wearing my motorcycle helmets just cut me off too much from the surrounding environment when on the board.

34

I have seen cops pull over a board that was using the lane. Far as I know, cops will LET you in lane IF you are turning left. Otherwise, its a ticket.

35

I rather the chance of a ticket than conform. I’ve gotten them before and beat the case.

Legality≠Morality

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36

Copenhagen bikelanes are a war zone :slightly_smiling_face:

I generally avoid the inner parts of CPH. It is doable though if you behave like you a lowest in the hierarchy. And much better than being among cars.

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37

I got hit by a car today. No turn signal right turn into a driveway. Hit their passenger door at what felt like mach jesus but closer to 35mph.

Stay safe out there y’all like I said before you can cover all your bases and something can still go wrong.

That being said who’s dealt with insurance and getting money for replacement parts? I have a feeling it’s gonna be quite a circus, looking for some insight.

38

I’ve been toying with the idea of RC planes lately, I’m kind of interested in autonomous route following winged aircraft.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that that market has all kinds of surprisingly inexpensive options for video recording and broadcasting.

The above mentioned Garmin Taillight is a nice option and I’ve thought about it, but it uses your phone as the UI, and so everything except for the video recording capability is useless to me sk8ing.

However, RC stuff is fairly inexpensive, lightweight and highly controllable.

For instance, the RunCam 6 comes in at $110, is 4k and has a 110 minute runtime (dollar a minute I guess)

With its control cable you could configure it to only record when you’re moving, mount it to the back of your board and have a record of all events. You could put another one on the front of your board and get usable video from every trip; and still be right at the cost of a Garmin.

Probably wouldn’t be too hard to hook it up to your main battery and then you wouldn’t need to worry about charging it.

RunCam also has a slick little helmet cam.

No Association, and I’m sure there are other vendors.

The other thing the RC community offers is a proximity sensor for Quads. I don’t know what the details are nor the range, etc. but in theory you could activate both really bright LEDs and the camera as soon as the prox sensor tripped.

I might just get one or both to play with.

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39

I think that is a great idea but I would wonder what regulations and roadblocks you would come across. At least in the us I know that it being a craft in the sky the FAA is gonna be all over you if they see you. That’s if they see you tho. It seems like a cool idea but using a proximity sensor wired and mounted to the board would give you better results/less interference than having a camera plane towed behind you.

I’ve thought the same thing about using a sensor and running it thru my own program but I realized
that i’m way more than $200 in on that without even time included.

I know skydio makes those quads you can throw up and can film you autonomously, and I would bet that’s your best option at least for filming, i think you’re looking at a big project if you want to do it yourself and have something autonomous.

40

Sorry, I wasn’t clear, the RC aircraft project and putting cameras on the board are two completely different things.

Although now that you mention it it would be incredibly cool to have a fixed wing RC plane following me around :slight_smile:

But the thing the RC industry is missing is really good obstacle avoidance. I’d spend more time picking up pieces of my plane than I would sk8ing.

3 Likes