Electronics company Bosch is partnering with Shimano, Trek and several other bicycle companies as well as automaker Audi in a new lobby group pushing for proximity beacons spottable by cars equipped with sensors. This V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) communication technology—similar chipset technology is already deployed in static street furniture around the world— has been trialled by many automotive and bicycle brands in recent years.
The fitting of V2X communication beacons to bicycles is controversial because it may increase the danger to road users not equipped with such technology.
The new lobby group—without a working website so far—is the Coalition for Cyclist Safety and also includes membership from the League of American Bicyclists and People for Bikes. (A press release for the new group, issued October 23, is hosted on the Bosch press website.)
Earlier in the year, German bike brand Canyon also said it would be working on V2X technology with Israeli company Autotalks which is part of the new group.
The founding coalition members of the Coalition for Cyclist Safety include Audi, Accell, BMC, Bosch eBike Systems, Gazelle, Shimano, Trek Bicycle Corp, Commsignia, Qualcomm, Deutsche Telekom and TELUS.
In theory, V2X technology allows sensor-equipped motor vehicles to know in advance there’s a V2X-equipped bike nearby.
“The Coalition for Cyclist Safety is making the significant commitment to deploy Vulnerable Road Users (VRU) connected technologies in bicycles and vehicles, along with local government partners,” said Jarrett Wendt, CEO of Spoke.
“It is time we moved past the question of should we deploy this life-saving technology or who should go first. We are focused on how we do so together, with intentionality and at scale,” he added.
“The roadmap to help save lives is clear and Audi’s commitment to deploying C-V2X connectivity is an investment in the future of our transportation ecosystem,” said Brad Stertz, Director of Audi Government Affairs. “Our participation in the Coalition for Cyclist Safety will help accelerate that objective.”
Currently, there are approximately one million cars on European roads equipped with V2X technology, and around 20,000 roadside units equipped for the infrastructure. These numbers are expected to greatly increase in the coming years, said a statement from Autotalks.
“Bike safety illustrates the effectiveness of V2X technology in accident prevention and constitutes a fundamental component of the global V2X deployment plan,” said Yuval Lachman, VP Marketing and Business Development of Autotalks.
Canyon—a direct-to-consumer brand—said it expects to have commercial availability of this technology by the end of 2026.
Downsides
Beaconization was given the official seal of approval in the U.S. as part of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the House of Representatives on November 5, 2021.
In addition to $4.7 billion for expanding highways, $1.79 billion for improving transit, and $605 million for bridge replacement and repairs, the Infrastructure Act formalized the acceptance of V2X technology with a section on “research on connected vehicle technology.”
This states that the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, along with the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office and the Federal Highway Administration, will “expand vehicle-to-pedestrian research efforts focused on incorporating bicyclists and other vulnerable road users into the safe deployment of connected vehicle systems.”
The Act called for an “analysis of the extent to which applications supporting vulnerable road users can be accommodated within existing spectrum allocations for connected vehicle systems.”
Vehicles to everything
Millions of posts, poles, and signs have already been equipped with low-power transponders so they can be detected by today’s sensor-equipped cars and tomorrow’s autonomous vehicles (AVs). The chipping of road furniture and junctions is a key part of a burgeoning new sector: “intelligent transport systems,” or ITS.
The deployment of infrastructure-to-vehicle beacons has been consequence-free so far—the posts and poles have no say in the matter—but ITS isn’t quite so intelligent when pesky humans are added to the mix.
The auto and telecommunications industries have been working with bicycle makers for several years on “bicycle-to-vehicle” (B2V) sensors.
The World Bicycle Industry Association is in favor of such beaconization, with general manager Manuel Marsilio telling attendees at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show’s Future Networked Car symposium that “bicycles will definitely have to communicate with other vehicles.”
That bicycle makers work with the “connected car” industry to discover which V2X sensor technology works best is seen as a sensible collaboration by many. Finally, cyclists will be safe on the roads; what’s not to like? For tech companies and affluent cyclists, the future will be rosy—connected cars will know exactly where on the highway beacon-equipped bicyclists are located, and smashes will therefore be avoided. Vision Zero made a reality, not through behavior change or hard infrastructure, but technology.
The more likely version of the future is deeply dystopian, says transport historian Peter Norton. Only the beacon-equipped will be spotted, he fears. Those choosing—say, for economic or privacy reasons—not to fit bicycle-to-vehicle beacons will be blamed for being hit by sensor-equipped cars, believes Norton, author of Autonorama, a book which details the potential civil liberty issues that pedestrians and cyclists may face from the roll-out of driverless vehicles.
“I have a hard time picturing how we get automated driving systems that reliably detect bicyclists not equipped with beacons,” says Norton, who is associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia.
“We know from research that detecting cyclists is one of the hardest things that autonomous vehicle developers have had to face. Beacons may increase the risk for cyclists because, if they give drivers the message that the car is watching out for cyclists, but the car is actually not doing that particularly well, then we make the situation for cyclists more dangerous.”
Chips with that?
If bicyclists must ride with Radio Frequency Identification beacons—or similar—the logical next step is for pedestrians to also sport RFID technology, warn detractors of B2V technologies.
ITS companies say most people are already carrying such technologies because smartphones signal their presence with Bluetooth. However, not everybody’s got a smartphone. And what about when a smartphone battery runs out? Or there are sync snafus?
Or perhaps you forgot to turn off airplane mode? Smash: you’re dead, say critics of the technology, pointing out that it would be your fault for assuming, wrongly, that you were protected from being hit by connected cars and trucks.
The auto industry is interested in getting pedestrians and cyclists to transmit real-time location information because it’s perhaps the only way AVs can operate in dense cities. Lidar, 360-degree cameras, and other “smart” vision technologies cannot yet give warning of the person running out from behind parked vehicles.
What about children too young for smartphones? Should a transponder be placed in an item of clothing instead? What if the child ran outside without wearing their beaconized baseball cap?
If the beacon always needed to be on the person, logically, that means it would have to be embedded in the body: are we ready for chipping all humans?
“The cooperative element enabled by digital connectivity will significantly improve road safety and traffic efficiency by helping cyclists and the other road users to take the right decision and adapt to the traffic situations,” the World Bicycle Industry Association’s Marsilio told the Future Networked Car.
He stressed: “The bicycle industry deems that the proper deployment of harmonized connected services is key to this objective and agrees that interoperability is a must. It is unacceptable that road users nowadays could die on roads because vehicles cannot communicate with each other due to non-inter-operable communication technologies.”
Marsilio added: “Boosting user uptake requires an appropriate regulatory environment.”
Regulatory environment? Fines or prison for those choosing to ride—or walk—beacon-free? It’s worth stressing that jaywalking— a “crime” in many U.S. states—didn’t exist until the motor industry invented the concept in the 1920s to enable motorists to travel faster on the roads and streets of the day. Cars have always been sold on the promise of speed: no speed, no sales.
Furthermore, “road safety” has often meant in practice “get out of the way of cars” and, historically, it led to people on foot retreating from the street.
B2V
Aside from Autotalks other companies working on bicycle-to-vehicle technologies include Tome Software of Detroit, Michigan, founded in 2014. It works with automakers such as Ford and others, and has more than 20 bicycle companies on its advisory board, including high-end brands such as Specialized as well as companies that market budget bicycles to big-box retailers. (Trek has also been part of this advisory board.)
Tome has also worked with Give Me Green, a system that involves equipping stoplights with bicyclist recognition technology which turns lights green for approaching cyclists.
As well as potentially equipping bicycles with beacons, Tome is working on technologies that won’t need Bluetooth bursts or other kinds of proximity pulses.
However, warns Norton, “if the tech turns out to actually make cycling safer for those who have it, but more dangerous for those who don’t, does that become grounds in policy for requiring all cyclists to have the necessary equipment for cars to detect them? If that’s so, then we now have problems about access to cycling among those with low budgets, or deterring cycling in a society where we need more, not less for lots of reasons, including sustainability and public health.”
Norton added: “We are not protecting these unequipped cyclists when we have equipped cyclists, and we are to some degree making their situation more serious as drivers and road authorities come to expect cyclists to be equipped.”
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