I've been waiting to upgrade my trusty EDGE 500 for quite some time.

EDGE 1000 was just too big.
510 didn't have maps.

BOOM - the unit I wanted. All competitors have been blown out of the water.

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My Blog

What actionable information does this provide? So a car is coming from behind; so what? You gonna ride off the side of the road? Does it tell you that the approaching car will give you less than three feet clearance? When riding, one should stay as far right as practicable, *all the time*. You never move left without visually checking what is behind you.

Unless you plan on diving into the gutter whenever a car approaches from the rear, I just don't see the point.

I see that the rear light blinks more strongly when a vehicle is approaching; I can see some small merit in that. But for that you need a display?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I'd rather have something in the car that warns them of a bicycle ahead. My knowledge of a car behind me does very little in ways of changing my behavior.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

Yes but it may prove really effective at transferring funds from triathlete's pockets into Garmin's coffers;)

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Maybe a small thing but on the sparsely travelled country roads I usually ride I occasionally fined myself zoning out a bit. Combined with a headwind which prevents me from being able to hear a damn thing the occasional car passing from behind startles me pretty good some times. My own fault, and not enough to drive the purchase alone but an interesting feature when comparing against like products maybe.

Right. Like 5 of the 6 cylinders shut off. Why Americans can't slow for ANYTHING is a mystery to me. And now they are speeding and texting. Bring on the self-driving cars and the sooner the better.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

x2

at high speed is hard to hear the cars coming from behind; I would like to be aware that a car is getting closer.

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

Not to go all PCH-highway-thread, but what features does this have that a mirror doesn't?

This can:
-Tell you how far behind a car is
-Tell you how fast it is approaching
-Eat batteries

A mirror can:
-Tell you how far behind a car is
-Tell you how fast it is approaching
-Tell you where in the lane a car is
-Tell you the behaviour of the car
-Tell you how big the car is

Edit: I suppose the integration with the blinky rear light could be useful. But it makes me think: why not have a blinky rear light with an "extra-dazzling" button by your brake levers?

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STAC Zero Trainer - Zero noise, zero tire contact, zero moving parts. Suffer in Silence starting fall 2016

"...what features does this have that a mirror doesn't?"

"...it may prove really effective at transferring funds from triathlete's pockets into Garmin's coffers;)"


+1, and +1

I felt a little bad about dismissing Ninety5 on the PCH thread and decided to give a mirror a try. I ride to train for performance and don't have room to have a giant mirror on the bars getting in the way of my position on the bike and changing hand positions, nor did I want a helmet mirror, so I ordered a relatively convenient mirror that I could quickly move between the three bikes I ride on roads. It was horrible. I couldn't get it in a decent position to see anything without contorting myself, which was neither quick nor convenient, and I spent more time trying to see what was behind me in the mirror than was reasonable to safely look ahead at what road debris was ahead. I ended up throwing the thing in a parts box and continue to ride as I have--as far right as practicable given the road conditions and moving into the full lane as necessary for my own safety, using a couple of bright blinking lights on every ride despite the light conditions. If there were something that could more conveniently and consistently help keep me safe I'd go for it. I'm not convinced this is it, but at least it's a start down that pathway of hopefully developing something.

No disagreement. As mentioned, it doesn't move the needle enough to make me interested in buying... just a hypothetical reason it may be compelling to some (mainly those that like to over engineer their solutions).

I can see it being useful even with a mirror. I used a mirror for awhile but was never able to get to the point where I was confident that there was or wasn't a car behind me with a quick glace into it, I'd need to focus for a few seconds. That made it less safe than just glancing over my shoulder. Could just be me though...

+1 for the fund transfer. At least they're a consistent cycling sponsor...

Why? What would you do? 99% of time when your radar went off the car would have passed you safely. Are you really going to dive into the ditch, or risk hitting the guard rail, on the slimmest of chances that car will hit you? You'd be causing the very thing you are trying to avoid: a crash.

for once if I am trying to avoid a pothole on the road i would like to know if a car is close to me; also, there has been more than one time when I try to look behind for XYZ and the car is right there next to me and i didn't hear it... that usually scares the crap out me

the more information I can get the better I am (imho); i do agree that is not the perfect solution but a step in the right direction.

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The entire event (IM) is like "death by 1000 cuts" and the best race is minimizing all those cuts and losing less blood than the other guy. - Dev

Cycling is so difficult. How do people do it?

Why do people yell "car back" on group rides? Why do we have rear view mirrors in cars? Knowing what's going on around us gives us more info that can help us react and improve our safety. We're not always as far right as we could be, for various reasons, so there are times we might move to the right knowing a car is coming. I had a friend on a group ride that got clipped by the mirror of a truck we didn't hear coming. We were in the shoulder but there was still some room to move to the right and he probably would have if he'd known a car was coming.

Maybe the next thing will be a rear view camera you can view on your Garmin. If nothing else, then you could view the suffering of your friends on a group ride. That's probably worth the cost right there.

This would be good for the folks not driving on the shoulder when there is one. Wasn't there a Duffy thread about this ;-)

You could take a look and make sure the vehicle is in the lane rather than shoulder. Depends whether they have an audio alert as I'm not normally staring at my computer. Perhaps, my peripheral vision would see the flash.

This.


I'm interested in this because of the increased situational awareness I would have.

If you run the Varia rear light with the radar, they work together. The light will increase its brightness and flash rate as a car approaches so, while the radar itself it might be useless as far as your situational awareness needs are concerned, it sounds like it could have a positive effect on idiot drivers' situational awareness ;-)

Could this be turned around and be programmed to measure draft distance?

whats the price for this device?

That was a really long paragraph to say "I tried a mirror but due to user error, it wasn't for me"

I don't see the point, every time you see a blinky light you turn your head to check out the car behind you? At that point, yeah get a mirror. I saw a motorcycle helmet with a rear view mirror integrated years ago, that would be a cool training helmet.

Chris,

I've been riding with a Take a Look mirror for the past 3 years or so. It's great for checking "my six" before lane changes, taking left turns, to see if riding partners have been dropped, etc. but there seems to be no way to set it up to have a view while riding in an aero position. My body i.e. shoulders and back are always in the way. Only if I sit up a good bit is a reasonable view possible and then only if I turn my head a bit to the left. The technique has become completely automatic but I'd love to be able to see while riding aero. Is there something I'm missing in setting up the mirror? I did spend hours torquing it around in a variety of positions to find what seems to be the best compromise. Perhaps I should be asking Kevin M. instead;)

Thanks,

Hugh

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Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.