Škoda DuoBell: A bicycle bell that penetrates noise-cancelling headphones

andrewshadura

The problem with headphones is not noise cancellation. It’s the fact they play music. My regular Widek bell penetrates ANC, but when there’s music, ANC or not, it’s hard to hear. I’m struggling to believe the claims this bell is going to be significantly better.

andrewshadura

> In real-world trials conducted on the streets of London in February, in cooperation with Deliveroo couriers, the bell proved so effective that couriers expressed a desire to keep it. Of course they would, because a lot of them either don’t have any bell, or have a shitty ping-ping bell that doesn’t produce good sound.

yigalirani

nice but it wont help with isolating earbuds

criemen

Pretty cool if true!

eamag

Is it available for sale?

croemer

Video version which has more detail than the text: https://youtu.be/zDaVPfpQvPI?is=sSyjXf07r9cg9r4Y Bit cringe marketing though.

leni536

So it's tuned to a specific frequency at 780Hz? And that defeats all/most ANC?

ai_slop_hater

How about cyclists stop cycling on sidewalks?

dbg31415

Just when you thought interacting with cyclists couldn't get any more annoying... introducing the Škoda DuoBell! New from Mattel!

Oras

Over engineering in real life, solving lack of common sense by introducing a solution where the cyclist is paying. I think the solution is nice for sure, but solving the wrong problem.

rmoriz

Reminds me of old Reich bells http://reich-cycle-bells.de and their „Trillerwerk“ (trill sound)

fnands

For a moment I thought this was an April fools joke product. Pretty cool though!

cool-RR

Begun, the noise-cancelling wars have.

laydn

Next challange: Place a camera in front of the bike that scans approaching pedestrians. Calculate their head position and trajectory. Use directional speakers and focused sound beams to focus the ~780Hz sound towards the head(s) of the pedestrian(s). Now that you are not bothering the environment as much, you can increase the volume as well.

Topfi

It is amazing they openly shared their findings [0], but one thing I am missing is what this design would cost if put into mass production. To the biggest layman possible, it reads like while the design is clever and would be more expensive by virtue of more materials/size alone, it's not impractical, but maybe someone more informed on this type of manufacturing can correct my ignorance. If that's the case, hopefully we'll see these designs on the market soon as even with music+ANC, I have found certain sounds to be able to easily penetrate through when listening, though that is purely subjective and I don't have my music earbleedingly loud... [0] https://cdn.skoda-storyboard.com/2026/04/Skoda-DuoBell-Resea...

lwansbrough

That can’t be aero. On a serious note there’s a marketing problem in my view: who out there who chooses to buy a bell even considers that their might be a loudness problem? It’s not immediately obvious that I need this and I’m sure there’s a premium price attached.

Etheryte

A reminder that a gun [0] would also work as a bicycle bell that works despite noise-cancelling headphones. [0] https://xkcd.com/1217/

tossandthrow

People don't tend to wear anc headsets when walking the Forrest. Maybe the issue is the noise in the cities?

ahmedfromtunis

I think it's time for some sort of a safety standard for a sound frequency to be reserved exclusively for alarm/alert use and that ANC systems have to let through. It goes without saying, use of said frequency should be prohibited for other purposes, especially marketing.

random_savv

Where can I buy this??