No Need For Bike Lights, Just Use A Drone!

Ever have that annoying experience where you set out for a midweek night ride with your mates, only to discover halfway through the ride that you’ve forgotten to charge your lights? That sucks doesn’t it? Or maybe it’s simply the effort required to find all of your lights mounting brackets buried deep beneath all your cycling crap, and trying to get the right charging cord to charge up the battery that puts you off from riding at night as much as you’d like to?

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an easier way to go night riding? 

Well, it looks like you can say goodbye to your helmet and handlebar lights, ‘cos creepy UFO night drones are here to follow you and light up your next night ride!

Yes, that’s right – a freaking drone! UK based motor and home insurance company, Direct Line, has teamed up with Saatchi & Saatchi to create the Fleetlights Drone, which is designed to light the path (or trail) in front of you. The idea originally came about as a safety initiative for people living and travelling in areas of the country that are poorly lit. As you’ll seen in the video, it’s quite a unique take on drone technology.

“Increasingly, technology will shift the centre of gravity for insurance from restitution towards prevention”, says Mark Evans, the Marketing Director of Direct Line in an interview published on Saatchi.com. “We want to lead the trend into this space and so we are always looking at innovative ways to proactively improve everyday life through emerging technologies. We felt that street lights could be much better, especially as the nights draw in. This beta technology has been created to show how a responsive light service could help people to feel safer.”

So basically the way it works is you have an app on your phone that allows you to ‘request’ drone assistance. It’s pretty much the uber of the skies, except drones don’t require you to rate their performance. They just do the job right every time. Well, unless they become self-aware, like Skynet. Then we are all up shit-creek without a paddle.

Wanna see how the creeper-lights work? Check out Direct Line’s video below of the Fleetlights Drone, and then the behind-the-scenes video below that. Personally, we can’t wait for the DVD Extras edition with all the outtakes.