Is this the future of mudguards? Five cool things coming soon from Ass Savers, Specialized, Prime, Magene and Bell

Cristox wrote:

If you had RTFM, you would have noticed that the ass saver mudguard is mounted much too high above the tyre. It is meant to be mounted as close to the tyre as possible to offer best protection.

Regardless, it's still rubbish.

"Ass Savers claims that it brings all the benefits of full mudguards without jamming or rattling"

That is an outright lie. Still, £22 is small change to the kind of people who think this is a useful device.

Your reply is what is rubbish. Alle the reviews I've read have stated it works very well, for what it is. It's not a full fender, so no, it won't do the same as a full fender, but it dus give way more protection than the normal Ass Savers and other fenders that attach to the seat post, and for some that is enough. Add to that the easy installation and removal, the light weight and reasonable costs, and for many people it actually useful.

A number of small children of my acquaintance have them, so presumably they have some cachet among the subgroup of middle-class parents who dress like they're still college kids. 

They make a lot of hiking gear and that sort of thing. Tents, rucksacks, what have you. They do make other things than the classic Kånken backpack. Their stuff is typically very high quality. 

They are a very well regarded brand, known for quality stuff with especially their products with a more classic esthetic standing out from other brands.

As for broader appeal, they (lucily) have not gone the same mass market route as The North Face for example has. Once known for top quality technival outdoor products, they now seem to specialize in cotton shirts and hoodies, caps and casual jackets with their logo plastered on it as big as possible.

40 years ago they made expensive but well regarded technical stuff. The collage kid stuff is a newer spin-off.

Agree, imagine turning up on a group ride on a shitty winters day with that on???

Well, that's what someone did on the gravel ride I joined last Saturday. And you know what? It worked really well.

I've been using radar since the first Garmin Varia in 2015, it's invaluable in rural/country areas, gives visual and audible warning on head unit of up to 8 vehicles from 140m away, and I don't know about the Magene, but the Garmin ones change the frequency and intensity of the rear flashing with proximity, i.e. flashing quicker & brighter as the vehicle approaches. There is often an audible change in vehicle speed as the driver sees this. 

Plus also, on the Garmin Varia versions, when paired with an Edge head unit with Connect iQ app support, you can install a data field that captures the approach speeds and display them, plus further analysis at mybiketraffic.com. I wrote about it a while ago here. The stats could come in useful at the inquest. 

https://road.cc/content/forum/garmin-varia-radar-data-analysis-290881

Thanks. It seems to me that radar analysis is not likely to be trusted by police forces and courts, whereas video evidence is far more substantial.

The Fly 6 (and Fly 12s) all have a reinforced cage around the SD card so even if the rest of the unit doesn't survive, there's a good chance that the SS card and it's data will ...
Providing the cage lasts long enough for the outcodes to be written to the file.

Far easier to get evidence from that then a radar plot that doesn't give any information than is blatantly obvious after the fact.

Yeah I know, I was being flippant, I'm hoping that an inquest is not needed. 

The point of the radar is obviously protection, by giving you a timely warning when cars etc. come up close from behind.
Camera's of coure serve a different purpose, and nothing's stopping you from using one. Some products combine both, but they are more expensive. So this is presumably aimed at people who either already have a camera, or don't feel the need for one.

I dont agree its point is protection, it's just a tech solution to providing you with some additional information about your surroundings, that may or may not be useful to you.

but then Im unlikely to find anyone who has spent 300quid on it who doesnt think its totes amazing, but it is not protecting you.

Sredlums wrote:

The point of the radar is obviously protection, by giving you a timely warning when cars etc. come up close from behind.
Camera's of coure serve a different purpose, and nothing's stopping you from using one. Some products combine both, but they are more expensive. So this is presumably aimed at people who either already have a camera, or don't feel the need for one.

But if you're happily cycling along and you get a warning about a car behind you, what are you supposed to do? If it's a good driver then you just carry on as you were, but if it's a bad driver, where do you go?

Good point.  If this one is like the Garmin reviewed presumably this is for "road with huge speed differential between bike and car which isn't at all busy".  Otherwise it'll just be beeping all the time.

Again though "what do you do"?  During the day it could warn you to keep an eye on the vehicle.  But then they ought to be able to see you given the detection distance.  At night I'm not sure it would leave you with sufficient time to observe a problem developing AND react (into the hedge).

I feel this is a bit like the "always make eye contact with the driver" advice too.  I've had a couple of "clearly looking straight through me" cases - must have been the hi-vis).  It's not useless but it's not a panacea.  It all depends on the time you've got to assess it's a bad driver and the time then left to fix the issue.

I have been trying to get mine to work not having had any garmin stuff before.

Seems you have to have the light on all the time in order for it to connect to the head unit or phone despite there being a setting for light off, radar on.

Is that what you found ?

You can definitely have radar on, light off, I've done this before on a 200km ride to eek out the battery for the evening. 

I've only ever used Varia radar with Edge head units, so I don't know what it's like on other brand head units or the phone app, but once you have the light on and paired with a Garmin Edge, you can swipe down and then across to the lights widget, and change between light modes, such as (on the 515) solid, flash, peloton, off. 

Wonder if it depends on the edge unit then as I don't have any swipes, just buttons.  It definitely lost contact on the phone app when switching off the light (small side led was still on).

Just paired my RCT715 with the app, and no light network options it would seem. Looking at the manual, peloton mode can be selected via the device key, that's probably better for battery during the day, or just leave it on day flash. 

Thanks. Says 16 hours day mode, so that is more than sufficient.

I did find a data field in IQ that tells me the battery level.

Which Edge model do you have, there may be light network options in the sensors menu if you don't have one with the widget menu.