All in or none in
To be effective any system like this needs to have high populatons of both beacons and detectors.
Vast market penetration (ooh err) of autonomous cars isn't going to happen very quickly, so unless there is legislation motor vehicle deployment is going to be a function of prices for independent units,deployment into new cars and the insurance market.
That's going to be glacial.
Even with non-draconian legislation it's still going to take years before enough vehicles are fitted to really make a difference and some vehicles (which may well be driven by inattentive drivers) will never have detectors fitted.
It's a pretty dire situation on the beacon side too,especially where margins are really tight in the cheaper BSO (bike shaped object -£100 supermarket 'bike') end of the market or on the sort of knackered old bikes which never get serviced and are often ridden without lights etc.
I don't think the beacon idea will ever work techically without draconian legislation which just isn't going to happen.
The only solution is to look towards detection of mobiles which most people carry-some sort of Doppler type system built into the phone OS perhaps? Rollout would be automatic and fairly quick- 3 OSs cover almost all the market and OS updates/new phone sales are much quicker thsn car replacement or service cycles.
But detectors are piffle. What would really make a difference isn't tech- it's spending more on cycling infrastructure everywhere and more attentive drivers and cyclists everywhere.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
