BansheeHorn – Motorcycle Warning System on Kickstarter

[EDIT]Kickstarter project is over, but Banshee Horn has its own website now.[/EDIT]

I got an email a couple of days ago from a gentleman who wanted to draw my attention to a project he’d put up on Kickstarter – a cool funding platform for creative projects that Kay browses constantly. The gent called it a “motorcycle warning system” and I wasn’t sure what that meant, exactly – sadly, my visit to the site got put on the back burner as I worked on some pressing projects.

Just went to take a look at it tonight, and the short summary is: we bought three.

This is actually a really cool unit that connects with your bike’s electrical system to… well, blast a super-loud airhorn and flash your bright lights. It’s designed so that you can still use your regular horn if you just give it a short toot, but if you hold the horn button in for half a second, you get the super-loud airhorn and your bright lights flash.

Easy, effective and potentially life-saving.

I can’t tell you how many corners we went around in Latin America to find a car or truck way over the line into our lane. (In fact, we learned in Latin America to hug the outside of the road, always, because the vehicles in the other lane DON’T respect bikers. The risk of sand or gravel on the edge of the road, as well as the risk of the road simply NOT BEING THERE like in parts of Mexico, was safer than riding closer to the center line.)

Here in the United States, there seems to be less problem with oncoming vehicles hogging our lane but more problems with cars pulling out of parking lots or side streets directly in front of bikers. Anytime I come up to *anything* that connects with the street where I’m riding, I’m vigilant for cars and other vehicles that could turn into me. But the F650′s stock horn probably couldn’t even be heard over someone with a loud stereo system – the airhorn and bright-flashing system in the BansheeHorn seems like a far more effective solution.

Obviously we’ll review once we’ve got them and installed them on the bikes. But the video and description look so good that we bought three – and we only have two bikes right now. We bought the third one in anticipation for the Ural we’ll be buying this summer.

Get in while you can, folks. This project currently has 46 hours to go on Kickstarter. After that, the price will go up whenever it makes it to stores.

Plus, it feels good to support an entrepreneur who has a well-designed product.