Brain Wave 3

  • The BIKE SYMBOL primes drivers to be aware of the cyclist as a person.

Brainwave 3

The unique BIKE SYMBOL LIGHT has the power to TRIGGER relevant associations in drivers’ minds; including vulnerability and recognition of the cyclist as a person

“Research findings provide evidence to support the claim that a cyclist using Brainy Bike Lights® rather than traditional bike lights will likely facilitate a driver’s awareness of the presence of a cyclist, as well as be more likely to prime thoughts of cyclist vulnerability in the mind of other road users.”

“From the results it is hypothesised that the semantic meaning of the cyclist symbol on the Brainy Bike Lights® made it easy for our participants (and hence, presumably for car drivers more generally) to distinguish that it was a bike light (and potentially also triggering associations relevant to the cyclist symbol), as compared to the other lights that could potentially signify either a bike or non–bike target. These findings imply that the Brainy Bike Lights® may offer a significantly more effective means of informing other road users of the presence of a cyclist than the use of more traditional bike lights that tend to resemble other vehicle lights more.”

“In word association between different words and the various bike lights, over 55% of participants considered the words ‘Identify as a person’, ‘Stand out’, ‘Brighter’, ‘More impact’, ‘Clearer’, and ‘Sharper’ as more relevant and associated to Brainy Bike lights® than to a traditional bike light.”

“The most powerful phrases that respondents felt summed up the advantage of Brainy Bike Lights® were ‘Allows faster identification and better standout of bikes on the road at night’, ‘Keeps cyclists safer on the road at night’, ‘Allows more accurate identification of bikes on the road at night’, and ‘Differentiates from other urban night clutter’.

Note that these subjective self-report statements are in agreement with the objective performance data of the speeded discrimination and visual search experiments (that is, they are consistent with the performance advantage seen in response to the Brainy Bike Lights® as compared to the traditional lights).”

Crossmodal Research Laboratory, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford 2013.

The symbol could also be said to prime drivers to respond in a particular way research and studies have shown visual priming to be particularly powerful. In this case drivers will be primed by the symbol to ‘think bike’ and act accordingly.