Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Rear view of my commute

I've been having some fun with the GoPro Wide Angle Hero Cam. Steve Woo captured his spectacular Wente Criterium Crash over the weekend and was able to do a post-mortem of the crash with his front and rear mounted GoPro.

My rear view of part of my commute isn't nearly as exciting, but it occurs to me that constantly running video of my rides might be helpful in determining fault in bike vs car collisions, and may even assist in catching hit and run drivers.



That red tire, by the way, is Hutchinson's Fusion 2 Pro. Carbon bead makes this folding tire a snap to install, Kevlar belt seems to provide good puncture resistance (though it hasn't gone through my East Palo Alto test road yet), and sticky compound on the sidewalls provide good grip for cornering. This fast tire enabled me to take two minutes from my personal best for the 10 mile trip from Menlo Park to Mountain View.

Here's the second half of my commute, where I cross the Ringwood Avenue pedestrian bridge into Belle Haven then cut across a parking lot and a dirt trail to avoid a couple of lights.

7 comments:

  1. Stupid question which you've probably answered a billion times already: how do you have your camera mounted? Whenever I try to do something like that (with my GorillaPod) the video is unwatchable because of all the vibration and bouncing.

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  2. Wow! That looks speedy and car-filled! The footage might come in handy some day for fault determination purposes, but I hope you're never in that situation.

    Safe riding!

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  3. Your lucky that you have bike lanes the whole way. Here in DC I have only a .25 mile stretch on my commute.

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  4. @ethan: the quality of GoPro's video is pretty poor, but their genius is in their mounting options, and they've thought of *everything*. In these examples the video is mounted to the wishbone above the seat stays. It's not going anywhere. I'll post more about GoPro's mounting options later, but it works really well.

    @Missy: This video shows my low traffic route!

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  5. hah, is that Christian rock you're righteously battling the traffic to?

    I'm, err, coveting this toy now. Can you post pictures of the GoPro mounted on your bike?

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  6. Hawk Nelson, "Let's Dance."

    I prefer peaceful co-existence to battle. :-)

    I'll post photos later, maybe this week if I get a chance.

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  7. Good stuff Fritz.

    While I *never* ride a bike (I say that every post) I find myself yelling at bicyclists to "*take the lane*" every once in a while. Silly amateurs.

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