Written on October 23, 2008 – 5:30 am | by Maria Mihale |


You have to admit that the urban area nowadays can easily be defined as an authentic jungle, which isn’t exactly a safe place for bicyclists. In order to make your participation to the traffic a whole lot simpler, you need all sorts of tools to keep you one step ahead of irresponsible motorists. Therefore, the Nike Hindsight gives you supernatural powers with extended peripheral vision so all these sneaky cars, so you have to be careful.

The Nike Hindsight cyclist’s glasses from designer Billy May are based on one thing and one thing only: stop cyclists from getting hurt on the roads. They work similar to bifocals except for your peripheral vision. At the extended side of each lens, there is a carefully arranged high-power Fresnel lens that captures the view to the sides of the wearer’s head and sends it into the peripheral vision. This way, riders can detect motion in a field of view beyond the normal human limit of 180 degrees. Hopefully, the extra data won’t be too distracting. But this is a very clever way of avoiding being side-swiped by a fast moving vehicle that was sitting outside your normal vision zones.



High power, diverging Fresnel zones aligned vertically distort into view an extra 25 degrees on both sides. Vision is radically distorted in the periphery, but as the eye detects only motion in that area, little clarity is lost in the process. A very clear advantage is the early warning of approaching vehicles, but a less obvious one is reducing the necessary head rotation to check behind. These glasses were designed for the use of bicyclists, but there are lots of other sports and activities where a greater field of view becomes an advantage.

These glasses remain just a concept product for the moment, but they might be expected by lots of sport-addicts out there.



(Source YankoDesign.com)