Spooklight Gives Your Bike Wireless Brake Light, Turns Signals

Being that most of us here at Switched are based in New York City, and that we’re all poorly paid bloggers, it should come as no surprise that we often rely on pedal power to get around. Considering that, it goes without saying that we enjoy combining our love of gadgets with our two-wheeled transport.

So we’re jazzed about the Spooklight, a bicycle taillight that, at least on paper, sounds well worth its slightly absurd £55 ($88) asking price. First off, it has blinkers — no more raising your arms to signal that you’re turning, only to have motorists ignore you anyway. Even better, the blinkers are controlled by a wireless, touch-sensitive panel you can attach to your handlebars — no more wires to get in your way or unresponsive buttons to mash. The Spooklight even steals a little mojo from the world of smartphones with an accelerometer that can detect when your momentum slows and accordingly activate a brake light.

We’d be pretty impressed if it stopped there, but wait! There’s more… unlike most other bicycle lights, the Spooklight is powered by a rechargeable Lithium-Ion pack (instead of disposable alkalines). Plus, instead of relying on a bulky AC adapter, it can plug right into your computer’s USB port to charge. Even more amazingly (if you don’t mind shaving time off its supposed 60-hour battery life), you can plug the Spooklight into your gadgets (an iPhone, for instance) to keep them charged.

The package is pretty neat, but there are two problems. First, we’re not willing to pay almost $90 for a bike light. Also, we can’t help but think that drivers and other cyclists aren’t accustomed to looking for blinkers or brake lights on a bike. If those suspicions are right, the Spooklight wouldn’t actually make us any safer, and make us more like those annoying four-wheeled atrocities that hog the road (We mean cars, by the way). [From: Wired and 50cycles]