How will a See.Sense, Cycling Ireland partnership enhance cyclists’ safety?

Earlier this week, Cycling Ireland and See.Sense announced a multi-year partnership intended to enhance the experience and safety of members of the cycling community and deliver exclusive benefits to Cycling Ireland members.

As part of this, See.Sense will become the official bicycle light supplier and official cycling data and insight supplier to Cycling Ireland.

“The data and the insights we’re sharing with Cycling Ireland are about enhancing the membership experience,” explains Irene McAleese, co-founder of See.Sense.

“It’s going to get some insights into what are the popular routes across Ireland, in terms of which routes are people taking and which are the busiest.”

Cycling Ireland will gain access to the aggregated insights of cyclists who have opted-in to share their ride insights via the See.Sense app. This will give it access to never before seen insights on how and where all types of people ride.

“What Cycling Ireland can do, from a safety point of view, is look at particular routes that might be quite busy,” McAleese continues. “It could then talk to the local councils and say: ‘Could you think about putting some signage up here or something because we can see that a lot of our members are taking these routes at these particular times of the day.’

“It’s also interested in getting more people on bikes in general, so it’s trying to inspire more people to ride and break out a little bit from their niche of being the club cyclists, into getting more women riding and different age groups.”

Cycling Ireland and See.Sense will work collaboratively to share aggregated information on popular ride routes and cycling habits as the partnership develops, ultimately leading to a better experience for members of the cycling community.

But from a See.Sense perspective, McAleese says it does work with towns and cities as well. The data it collects is different to what you get through an app as there are sensors in the light, so it can get data on the condition of the roads that the cyclist is travelling over, for example, how rough or smooth it is, or if there are any areas where there is a lot of braking, swerving or even collisions. It can then work with cities who are interested to improve cycling conditions.

“We’re a company of cyclists, by cyclists for cyclists,” she adds. “Our bike lights help cyclists become more visible, but also in the ride insights we get also help to make cyclists visible to cities when they’re doing their planning, they don’t have a lot of data on how to design things. If they don’t have this information then cyclists can get left out and they just continue to design cities around cars.”