In the Bike-Car wars, bikes getting a new tool

Jonathan Lansey with the Loud Bicycle Horn he created.kim bokeh

Looks like the power balance in the motorist-bicyclist turf battle is about to shift. After a successful Kickstarter campaign, veteran bike commuter and engineer Jonathan Lansey is poised to release his Loud Bicycle Horn . At 112 decibels, the $95 horn is so loud — and car-horn like — that motorists think they’re being honked at by two tons of steel, not some guy wearing spandex and riding a $3,000, 18-pound titanium two-wheeler. “If bikes are sharing the roads with cars,” said Lansey, “they should communicate in the drivers’ language.” (Besides flipping the bird, that is.) “Drivers react instantly to a car horn. They don’t need to think about what to do.” Lansey’s bike commute from Medford to work, most recently at Quanttus , a Cambridge start-up developing wearable monitors, motivated his quest for a better horn. It also allows him to test drive his product, which sounds like a Chevy Suburban, is the size of a small tissue box, and, with its chrome grille, sort of resembles the front of a car.

Lansey, 28, gave an example of the horn’s power: “A guy was pulling out of a parallel parking spot,” he recalled. “When I honked I was right outside his window. He had already checked for a car, but didn’t see one. When he heard my horn, he didn’t know what to think. It sounded like a car, but me and my bike were the only things there.” Score one for the bikes.