Be Heard While Cycling With A Loud Horn That Honks Like A Car
Safety when cycling comes in many forms, from adding reflectors and lights to your bike to wearing a helmet and reflective clothing to integrating a rearview mirror to using a bike bell to alert pedestrians and drivers alike. And all of those are well and good, except for the unfortunate fact that a standard bike bell is unlikely to be heard inside a vehicle, which means that if a driver doesn’t see you, you don’t really exist to them. One solution is adding a really loud bike horn, and even better, a loud bike horn that sounds like a car horn, which can readily get a driver’s attention.
Being cut off by a vehicle turning right (or left, for that matter) or pulling out of a road or alley right in front of you can be a harrowing experience, especially when riding at faster speeds or in poor lighting or inclement weather. And even if you see it coming, ringing your bike bell is probably not going to be much good in alerting the driver so they can avoid hitting you. But using a Loud Bicycle horn, which honks at 125 decibels and sounds like a car horn, might be more effective.
Loud Bicycle was originally launched as a Kickstarter project by Jonathan Lansey back in 2015, where it met with success and raised more than $52,000 to finalize the design, test prototypes, and do an initial production run. A year or so later, the Loud Bicycle team was back on Kickstarter with another campaign, this time with a new and improved (and smaller) version of the Loud Classic, called the Loud Mini, which was also successful and has become the company’s go-to horn.
“The idea for Loud Bicycle was born on an ordinary day in 2012 when Loud Bicycle founder Jonathan Lansey was biking to work and, suddenly, a car swerved to cut in front of him. His instincts told him to honk—after all, that’s what he’d do if he were in his car. But no bicycles had horns back then. He felt powerless in that moment, knowing there was no reliable way to communicate with the person driving dangerously.
But the honking instinct gave Jonathan an idea: what if there were a bike horn that sounded like a car horn? A horn like that would get the attention of people who drive and make biking safer.”
With a two-tone sound that emulates a car horn, capable of producing 125 decibels of honking, the Loud Mini is going to be heard by drivers, and because we are conditioned to react to car horns (as opposed to bike bells), the chances are good that a driver will notice the cyclist before an accident happens.
The Loud Bicycle horn can be mounted on the handlebars with an easy release mount so as to be able to remove it for charging or for swapping it to another bike, but by adding the optional security screws, the Loud Mini can be made theft-proof. The button to operate the horn can be mounted on the handlebars for easy access.
According to the website, the Loud Mini weighs less than a pound, and its battery lasts as long as 4 months between charging (480 seconds of honking). However, it doesn’t come cheap though, as the Mini retails for $179. Get the details at Loud Bicycle.
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