Skoda has unveiled the DuoBell, a fully mechanical bike bell engineered to cut through active noise-canceling (ANC) headphones.
The automaker has reinvented the bicycle bell, along with acoustic researchers at the University of Salford, to address a real and growing urban problem: pedestrians so thoroughly cocooned in their ANC bubble that a traditional ring doesn’t reach them.
SkodaWhy can’t a regular bike bell do the job anymore?
Over the year, ANC has improved drastically, to the point that ANC-enabled earphones or headphones cut the environmental sounds almost completely.
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In London alone, up to half of all pedestrians now walk around wearing noise-canceling headphones, and many of these devices, especially the flagship ones, are so good that a conventional bicycle bell cannot penetrate them.
With cycling numbers climbing sharply in cities around the world, and ANC getting more accessible,
...Keep reading this article on Digital Trends.
