Brake Free Production Version

[bhern]

Just a final word from me after a month or so riding with the production version of the Brake Free helmet light.

(The quick summary of what it is: a rearward facing light that attaches to your helmet and is triggered by deceleration events -- braking, of course, but also easing off the throttle or downshifting -- to light up, hopefully giving traffic behind you awareness of your existence and awareness that you are slowing down. I contributed to an Indiegogo campaign to fund its initial development, so was able to get in on the ground floor, so to speak, of this new product. Here's a link to the earlier thread where this product was discussed: https://www.spyderlovers.com/forums/...rd-brake-light, and a follow-on thread describing the beta testing of it late last year: https://www.spyderlovers.com/forums/...ke-Free-Update)

I've been real pleased with the performance to date. The fixes they made between the beta test and the final version were all solid -- the button to control the display pattern and turn the device on/off has been improved so that it works easily, even with gloves on. The light now lets you know when it is fully charged, and the claimed battery life of 8 hours seems to be accurate, if not conservative. One of my rides with it was over 5 hours start to finish, and even with it on the entire time, the light was indicating at least 50% battery life remaining. It's lightweight, and completely unnoticeable to the rider -- no wind/whistling noise, etc. The helmet still fits neatly into the frunk without a problem. Here's a picture of it on my helmet for perspective on size/appearance:

IMG-2103.jpg

Most importantly, it works -- my wife traveled behind me on one excursion and said it seemed accurate to her in that it was correctly triggering when I slowed down. She's not a big fan of some of my geek forays, but was in favor of this one from the start because of the safety angle -- when we ride two-up it's on her helmet (the light fastens to a helmet mount, so we simply got an additional mount when we made our initial contribution, which allows the light to be transferred from the operator to the passenger when riding two up) My reason for posting at this point was simply to close out my part in the previous discussions on the concept, as some folks expressed interest in this or something similar. Bottom line, it gets a thumbs-up from me for doing the two primary jobs I wanted it to do: make me more visible and give me a way to encourage the drivers behind me to back off a bit when I'm backing off. I'm happy to respond to questions about it, but won't be "selling" it to anyone beyond this message.

Speaking of selling, for those who *are* interested, I do have a referral link and coupon code for your use. They're offering it at a pre-launch price of $149.99 (final retail will be $169.99), and using my link and/or coupon code will knock another $10 off that. Full disclosure, I get a kickback on anything bought on that link/coupon.

End of commercial.

Here's the link: https://www.brakefreetech.com/?ref=2qoAiJ0Q7J7b

And here's the coupon code: M83UZNYOYXKA.