LED HANDLEBARS ILLUMINATE BIKE SAFETY

When it comes to bike safety, there is no shortage of illuminating reflectors, clamp lights and frame lights to make night riding less of a dark peddle down the road of hazard.

Yet the newest addition to hop on that saddle entirely does away with the need for fastening anything to your bike. Instead, Mitchell Silva has created GLOBARS and they perform just like they sound. They're handlebars integrated with LED lights.

"My idea was to create a bicycle light that could be easily used, and offer the same user friendliness of integrated bicycle lights, while remaining at a significantly lower price point," Silva wrote on his website.

For his prototype, Silva cut long strips out of the bars and installed plastic tubing on the inside to keep them rigid.

"I then installed approximately 40 high-efficiency LED bulbs into the inner plastic tubing, and installed a momentary actuator button on the back of the bars," Silva explained. "The whole system runs off a watch battery."

Silva envisions his GLOBARS benefiting those who face the most danger: urban cyclists. In 2009, 630 cyclists were killed in the United States alone and 51,000 were injured. Of those accidents, 70 percent occurred in urban areas.

Besides their safety attributes, GLOBARS are super bright and, not to mention, really cool-looking. And who wouldn't want to ride around the city streets at night gripping a pair of glowing-bull-horn handlebars?

Discovery News