The white "ghost bike" at Huntington Avenue and Forsyth Street haunted Amir Farjadian and Qingchao Kong each time they rode past it on their way to Northeastern University.
It had been left there in June 2012 in memory of Kelsey Rennebohm, a Boston College graduate student and fellow bicyclist who died after a collision with a bus. And although the two engineering students didn't know Rennebohm, the ghost bike was enough to make them rethink their focus on stationary bicycles at Northeastern's Biomedical Mechatronics Laboratory.
"We found there were many products out there for exercise but almost nothing for safety, even though almost two people die every day in this country due to cycling accidents," Farjadian said, "and more than 130 people are injured."
Working with a team of undergraduate students led by Professor Constantinos Mavroidis, the two Ph.D. candidates began work last year on an accident-prevention system designed to turn any bicycle into a "smart bike."
Consoles attached to the front and back of the bicycle project lasers onto the road, creating a virtual bike lane that blinks if a car intrudes.
The consoles also contain sensors to determine the bike's proximity to objects moving around it.
"Based on that distance," Farjadian said, "we can calculate the relative speed and predict whether the two are about to collide."
If they are, a speaker on the front console emits a sound similar to that of a car horn to alert both the cyclist and the driver.
LED turn signals are built into the front and rear consoles and automated through a smartphone app and GPS.
A cyclist who's unsure of directions simply enters the destination and follows the turn signals.
If the cyclist is approaching an intersection without slowing down, Kong said, the bike's handlebars vibrate.
The entire system will retail for about $100 and could be on the market by the end of the year, Mavroidis said.
"Cycling has many benefits — for your health, for your wallet, for the environment," Farjadian said.
"If we can do something about the safety, we'll have addressed the one thing that's missing."
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