Tech Tuesday: Hitting the road with CycleSafe for National Bike Month
People riding their bikes on campus.
May is National Bike Month, and while many Arizonans are hitting the roads on two wheels, one University of Arizona researcher is working to make sure they come home safely.
Dr. Daniel Latt
Picture this: A small device tucked inside your bicycle handlebars silently monitors passing traffic, automatically capturing photos of license plates when a car comes too close, and logs the exact GPS location of every near- miss. University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson researcher Daniel Latt, M.D. Ph.D. has developed a device to do exactly that; he calls it CycleSafe (see invention UA20-165 on the TLA Inventions website).
CycleSafe, a “Proximity Sensing, Warning, and Reporting Device,” is a handlebar-mounted proximity detection and imaging system designed to document dangerous passing incidents between cyclists and motor vehicles. Arizona law requires drivers to give cyclists at least three feet of clearance when overtaking, a rule that is frequently violated and difficult to enforce. CycleSafe aims to change that.
"It's like a dash cam for your bike” is how Dr. Latt, a professor of orthopedic surgery at the U of A, describes the invention. "People are familiar with that concept. It's an automatically triggered dash cam for your bike, basically."
The device uses a proximity sensor mounted on the left handlebar to detect when a vehicle passes within the legal threshold. When triggered, it captures and stores a rapid series of photographs. Via a Bluetooth connection to the rider's smartphone, it simultaneously captures GPS coordinates and timestamps each incident. Riders can later review the footage, and if they wish, they can select images and upload incident data to a server that aims to build a growing map of dangerous locations for cyclists across the region.
"We can start to collect information about where these types of incidents are happening," Dr. Latt said, "and hopefully make the road safer, either by enforcement or by modifying the road configuration."
In its current form, CycleSafe sits directly into the hollow space inside a standard bicycle handlebar, making it a simple add-on for virtually any bike. The team is also exploring integration with e-bikes, potentially harnessing e-bike batteries to power the device.
Dr. Latt’s path to this invention is deeply personal. A cyclist himself, he lost his sister at age 21 when she was struck and killed by a car while riding a bike. Years later, a car's side mirror struck him while riding over Gates Pass, a close call that emphasized the need for a solution.
"It had been on my mind for a long time, how to make the road safer for cyclists," Dr. Latt said.
CycleSafe has been developed over three iterations as a U of A engineering senior design project, with software development contributions from Arizona State University. The team has also partnered with the Rob Dollar Foundation, an Arizona nonprofit focused on cycling safety advocacy, which is helping to drive the device toward production.
"Our goal is to make the road safer for every cyclist," Dr. Latt said. "We intend for this to be a low-cost device that's accessible to everyone."
The team hopes to begin limited distribution of CycleSafe within the year, and plans to form a nonprofit to produce and distribute the device broadly.
Chck out this innovation, available for license. Visit UA20-165 "CycleSafe" to learn more and to connect with us about licensing and availability.