Volkskrant - This easy-to-store bike light makes you extra visible on the road, but it has one problem
In the Gadget Desk, science editors report weekly on new apps and tech toys. This week: your crotch in the spotlight with the bicycle light Ziemi.
This year, ANWB began the campaign Turn your lights on in the dark, because over 20 percent of cyclists pedal through these deeply dark months without lights. In 2003, half of all cyclists were lampless; surely that has improved considerably. Maybe that's why that lackluster slogan. "You're a retarded primate if you go out on the road without lights," comes in louder.
TU Delft student Luci Santema devised the bicycle light Ziemi, which illuminates not the street, but the cyclist's legs. According to traffic research institute SWOV, over 70 percent of all cyclists are hit from the side. With lit legs, cyclists are more than 50 percent more visible to motorists, concluded research firm TNO.
The Gadget Desk is one of those retarded primates who buys AH lights and loses them before she gets to her bike. Batteries of bolted bicycle lights she forgets to replace. There are plenty of similar excuses to come up with, but the fact remains: the Gadgetdesk almost always cycles without lights. Testing Ziemi feels like a new opportunity. It is also no life to get on your steel steed with a pounding heart for fear of ending up in a police trap (scarier than getting into an accident, apparently).
A lot of good, one problem
Ziemi does a lot of things right. You don't need anything for installation; you just buckle the rubber attachment around your handlebars like a tiewrap and slide the light in. For your keychain, there's a handy, magnetic ring that you snap the light into when you reach your destination. If, like the Gadgetdesk, you place your keys on your desk during work, where your phone charger also lies, the step is small enough for most primates to recharge that light once in a while.
The only problem is that Ziemi only serves as a supplement to normal bicycle lighting. Lighting that 20 percent of Dutch people still do not have. Hopefully soon Ziemi will not only shine on your crotch, but also forward and backward. In one spectacular holder for on your keychain, because the less hassle, the more real the chance of lighting.
Indeed, the smartest thing about Ziemi is that magnetic keychain, to which the light snaps on almost as smoothly as AirPods in their white, slick case. The Gadgetdesk never forgets that, by the way, because who cycles without AirPods in them?