It would show all vehicles in both lanes coming up from behind you

It has a wide beam, so it'll pick up things in both lanes.

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Shane Miller - GPLama
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It will pick up anything in the radar arc. For example I ride On a feeder road next to a highway. For that portion you get a lot of obvious false positives but the cars are moving so fast it’s not a bother

Thank-you for the replies. So, if I’m riding through the city where there are a lot of cars going by, and I don’t want to get irritated with the constant beeping, or irritate my fellow riders behind me with the constant flashing of the rear light, can I disable the radar and just use it as a light (non-flashing), and then re-enable the radar when I get out into the country?

Yes you can

You can have light set to off, blink, steady or variable controlled by radar

You can turn off the radar by disconnecting the sensor at the head unit

The Varia along with a helmet mirror are the two best safety purchases I have made.

I live in a rural area so I don't get much traffic. So whenever a car does approach, I get an audible beep and graphic. I then check my mirror and it is pretty easy to tell if the car has spotted you based on their movements. Before the Varia, I had to check my mirror on regular intervals constantly and on a 3 - 6 hour ride in aero position that starts to add up. Even then, I would occasionally have a car sneak up on me without me seeing them first. Now I only look when Varia detects a car. It has never missed one and gives me plenty of reaction time if I feel like the car has not spotted me.

In a heavy traffic area or even moderate traffic for that matter, I think the constant alerts and graphic would just become white noise and be ineffective.

The Varia will detect two lanes of traffic but will not show two lanes on your bike computer.

Gives you plenty of reaction time to do what? In my area, usually my only option is to ride into a ditch or woods or other unsafe place. I would have to be pretty sure the car was going to hit me before I risked pretty significant injury by reacting.

Also, how the heck do you get a helmet mirror to work, especially in aero.

Try using a helmet mirror when you are blind in your left eye...

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Well the first thing I do is sit up and make myself more visible. I actually will move more to the center of the lane to get their attention. You can tell pretty quick rather or not an approaching vehicle sees you. Last resort would be to ride off the side of the road. It has never came to that [fingers crossed]. The vast majority of the time, I see the car...the car sees me and I never change a thing besides give as much room as possible.

I use the "take a look" helmet mirror. Been using it for years. It is very adjustable and I can see my 6 in full on aero

Trying to pitch someone on a Garmin Varia is like trying to convince someone that water is delicious if they have only ever tasted Coke their whole life. The moment you try it, all questions are answered.

The Varia went on sale, I bit, and now I've tested it for several rides. Here are my observations . . .

• The radar works great. It projects onto my Garmin 820. It has always given at least a little warning although, on my area hills, it sometimes doesn't notify me until the car is very close. A couple false positives. A couple times when the warning was too late for me to do anything about it. On balance, it works very well. I wouldn't hesitate to use the radar without a mirror to back it up.
• I'm not confident in the value of the light. I manually set it to daytime (random) pulse mode before each ride. This is the brightest mode. But each time I've finished a ride, I have discovered the light was on the dimmest solid mode. I do not know how or when the mode switched, but I didn't switch it. This gives me a lot of concern. I don't feel I can depend on the light by itself. If it's dusky or dark, I will use a real taillight (dinotte quad-4) at the same time. Does anyone know why the light mode changes? Does this happen after the first contact passes out of range? Is there a way to keep it from changing back to dim?
  

Most likely you currently have the light control on the Edge set to 'low' mode. Go to the sensor/light control menu on the Edge, find the light, set it to 'daytime flash' from the Edge.

You can also set the light for fully automatic control from the Edge - you may have to consult the manual for some of these steps' specifics:


1. Put the light into pairing mode (press and hold the button until the status LED blinks purple)
2. On your Edge, search for LIGHTS and pair with the light. The status LED changes to a blue flash.
3. Using the Edge's light control menu, put the light into daytime flash mode.

Turn the Edge off: your light turns off.
Turn the Edge on: your light turns on, in the mode you selected.

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Less is more.

Thanks for the advice. I will check my Edge settings. I didn't set them manually when I paired the Varia.

x2. Plus, I also consider it very important to act predictably. E.g. not start moving laterally during "final approach."

It sounds too exhausting to me to use mirror/radar to try to gauge the mental state and intent of each vehicle approaching from the rear. I just plant myself where I think I should be, and stick to it. I have a rear flasher for visibility.

I can only see a pretty narrow use-case where I think I might find the radar useful. And that's on country roads with no shoulder, and rare traffic. On those I'll often plant myself in the middle of the lane - particularly going downhill. And cars are so quiet that they can sneak up behind you. It can see if I got good advance notice, I could move over for them to pass and wave them by when I think it's safe. That's about it. I can't imagine using it in areas with any kind of real traffic density.

Country roads with no shoulder, with rare traffic, are the only kinds of roads I have to ride on. The Varia is really great in that situation. Gives me a heads up before I can hear the car. Is also good at identifying when there is a car behind a car.

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No coasting in running and no crying in baseball

So I got my Varia this week, and took it out today to try it out. I didn't actually ride with it (my bike's on the trainer for the winter), but I went for a walk, stood on the edge of a road, held the varia in one hand and the edge in the other, and tried it out just to make sure it works and familiarize myself with the settings. I mostly was able to figure things out, but there was just one thing I could not get to work, which is how to have the light stay steady and not flash when it detects a car.
I learned how to use the radar without any light on at all (use the top botton on the light to put it into standby mode with just blue led flashing)
I learned how to use the light without the radar (just disable the radar on the garmin)
I learned how to control the light mode manually (adjust the setting on garmin to "individual" then toggle modes by pressing the button on top of the light)
Only problem is that even when I had manual control of the light mode, it would still flash whenever the radar detected a car approaching. The only time it would not flash is when I had the light off completely (standby mode). I am thinking of a situation where I am riding with others, who may not necessarily like the intermittent flashing. I would like to keep the light on steady, and disable the flashing part of it, but still have the radar on. I don't think there is anyway to do that. I guess the engineers decided it should always flash when a car is approaching, for safety's sake. Does anyone know how to disable the flashing?

You might want to check out the latest firmware for the Bolt:

BOLT WB15-5027 - 26 August, 2019

• Added: Support for ANT+ radar sensors

I'm across it. I've been testing it for weeks, and spent a few days putting together a video on how it works. And I blasted it across all my social media/sites when it was launched.... actually 6hrs ahead of embargo because Wahoo released it early.

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Shane Miller - GPLama
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Thanks for the great, informative video.