Exploding Bike Lock Ensures a Safe Bike and an Awesome Lawsuit

November 06 2008 / by John Heylin
Category: Gadgets   Year: 2009   Rating: 2

There’s two things an exploding bike lock will get you – a safe bike and a lawsuit.

Mike Lambourn, a product designer out of London, has built himself an exploding bike lock. Not exploding as in fire, but as in liquid. Inside the bike lock is compressed air and liquid which, when the wall is breached by a device such as a bolt cutter, shoots all over the place. As you can see from the video above it’s quite a spray, getting all over the bike, the ground, and especially the thief.

Why would you want to spray liquid all over everything?

It’s what’s inside the liquid that counts. “A bike that has been stolen will be covered in coloured dye (the dye renders the bike undesirable and therefore unsellable ) as well as transluscent Smartwater – an invisible forensic property marking liquid.” The hope is that the dye will mark the bike as stolen and UV scanners could pick up the invisible dye on thieves for police to arrest.

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Make Your Bike Bright As Hell With Reflective Vinyl Tape

December 19 2008 / by John Heylin
Category: Gadgets   Year: 2008   Rating: 2

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You see it on cop cars and emergency vehicles — reflective tape so bright you wonder how they got it on nonetheless have it stay clean.  Finally a couple guys figured that if can work for emergency vehicles, it can work for bicycles.  The result?  Bikes coated in reflective vinyl tape which can be seen at night when put in the headlights.

They bought the engineering grade reflective tape from Beacon Graphics and began coating their bikes with the stuff.  After successful tests they even had a workshop where people brought their bikes in to get them plastered with the stuff.  The idea is to increase the visibility of the bike at night when it's most dangerous to ride around town.  The great thing about it is you don't have to reflector your bike up like a little schoolgirl, instead you can cover it in black tape.

Check out some sweet videos and the rest of the story at Bright Bike.