Project Aura 2.0 in development
Winner of the 2013 Business Bout $25,000 Entrepreneurship Award


Riding at night can be a daunting and dangerous task, an issue many bike commuters deal with daily. My friend Ethan Frier and I are both bikers and we know how intimidating it sometimes is to be cycling on the same roads as a car or truck weighing 100 times what we do - being pushed to the far edges of the road shoulder and always having to worry about the large consequences of a driver's small mistake. We wanted to develop a system which increased the visual presence of bikers at night.

Winner of the Core77 2011 Transportation Design Award
Featured on:
Core77
ArchiLight
Tree Hugger
Urban Velo
and many more...

- 38% of all bicycle fatalities in 2008 occurred at intersections
- 6pm-9pm were the times that most accidents occurred in 2008
(from Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)

Follow our work in progress here



Attachable front and rear lights are great at making riders seen, but they are not always the most effective way of increasing visibility to all motorists, especially from the side. Additionally, front and rear lights do little to identify a biker as a biker as opposed to an ambiguous blinking point of light. Many bikes have reflectors on the wheels and the frame. But reflectors are only effective when they are in the direct headlight of an automobile, an inadequate solution.

Final prototype in action



By illuminating the rims, we have created an immediate formal context for drivers to identify bikers as bikers and take the appropriate measures to drive safely in their vicinity. The goal of the project was to rethink the paradigm of bike lights, while increasing convenience and safety and integrating everything into a package which did not detract from the pure aesthetic of the bike coveted by riders.