Wireless bicycle brakes

[Rupert]

This is nuts:

www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-cebit-wireless-bicycle-prototype-mission.html

questions:
- What the bike is that in the photo anyway
- Is it still 99.9999999999997% reliable if the batteries run out?
- What happens if I just want to hold on tight on the bars because I'm scared rather than because I want to brake ;D
- "train and airplane experiments are far too sophisticated, and could even endanger the life of human beings in case of malfunction." what about cyclists - are we just guinea pigs then?
- How did they get all those millions of Euros for it!

[andybz]

It depends how you define failure. It appears to me they are only considering the situation where you activate the brake and it does not work.

This does not include the situation where the brake activates when you don't want it to. This is probably what will happen if the batteries die because it would normally be the case that power is used to hold the brakes off not to push them on. This may be considered fail safe, but I suspect the likelihood is much higher than suggested in the article.

It appears to me that the bike brakes is only a trial of a method and not proposed as a new feature for modern bikes.