https://www.bikebiz.com/news/bike-beacons
Many lives would be saved if cycles were fitted with “bicycle-to-vehicle” beacons, a cycle industry association boss told automotive leaders at an event on the first day of the Geneva Motor Show.
Manuel Marsilio, general manager of the Confederation for the European Bicycle Industry was speaking at the ‘Future Networked Car’ symposium. This brought together motorcar manufacturers, information and communication technology industries, governments and regulators to discuss the status and future of vehicle-to-vehicle communications and automated driving.
It is the goal of the “connected car” industry to make cyclists wear "beacons" so they can be detected more easily. Currently, "erratic" cyclists are hard to detect by autonomous vehicles. And pedestrians, too, are often not spotted by a plethora of detection devices on the most tricked-out "driverless cars".
B2V is a new addition to the Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything technology. C-V2X connects equiped vehicles to a larger communications system allowing them to communicate with other vehicles, pedestrian devices, cyclists and roadside infrastructure, such as traffic signs and construction zones.
B2V-enabled equipment gives alerts directly to approaching vehicles fitted with corresponding detection devices. The downside, of course, is that not all cycles will be equipped with beacons or other B2V alert methods, so the tech is far from a panacea. And pedestrians, too, would also need to carry beacons, showing that "smart" cars are a long way off being truly smart, a point raised earlier by transport correspondent Christian Wolmar in this BikeBiz-connected podcast.