Bike Rage and the automatic language of screaming

For some reason a couple days of woman's golf (some Open or something) has pushed me from the relative safety of the cycle path back on to the road. I like to ride on the road there is a continuity and preservation of speed that is hard to maintain on a cycle path with gates and dog walker etcetera. There is however one thing that hacks me off and thats cars squeezing you out when they pass by.

In my case this is almost always accompanied by latent rage. When someone pass me by too close and gives me a scare by the time I'm in a position to verbalize it they are out of shouting range grr.

As on many a dreich Scottish day of almost rain that get you wetter than seems plausible, an idea struck. Maybe Arduino could offer a hand in this precarious real time situation. in principe I want to know when something is too close, I want them to know it too!

The proximately aspect is no problem, I have plenty of low cost easy to use ultrasonic range sensors (SRF05) which are highly directional. One decision with a bit of tuning and I can turn a distance into information of vehicle too close. How to communicate this tho a buzzer.....?

Let reflect on buzzers and notification. We are swamped with tech wanting our attention and often this is unimaginatively achieve through beeps. My microwave proudly announces, 'my work here is done' with a loud monotonic beep. More than this if I fail to respond it beeps some more as if to say "dude I've heated this up get your butt over here!". This techno nagging is also very noticeable on our mobile devices. Being a bit of a tech I have a number of devices that receive mail. If they happen to be collocated when I receive a mail there is a veritable cacophony of tones, chimes and bassy submarine noises.

Now for a long time it has been possible to tailor this notification to your needs. My very first phone allowed me to attach a ringtone to a person, so before my phone came out of my pocket I knew who was calling. Not sure how many people are geeky enough to do this kind of thing nowadays. As we now have many more contacts, with different modalities of communication and we may communicate via any number of our own devices the complexity of configurability makes tailoring notifications hard work for little reward.

So back to the chase, I'm on my bike and some white van is unwittingly about to make an attempt on my uprightness and how do we communicate this. The greats of performance will tell you that timing is everything, this case is no different. I want to know about the van before I tell the van I know about the van, you know? A subtle interactions is all thats needed here, a light vibration on my back to give fore warning would do. Personal and not to alarming. The Van on the other hand we want to intimate that 'dude not cool, too close!' so as the SFA put it the international language of screaming, not a horn that say "I'm here" is a ubiquitous fashion but a blood curdling scream thats noticed.

Most drivers are simply unaware of the sense of closeness a cyclist experiences as a massive chunk of metal opportunistically lurches past, this project may be just the thing to rase awareness.

(just in case anyone is worried I haven't like most of my Arduino ideas probably won't get round to making this, shame)