What does the forum think of this?

Any opinions of this....thing?

https://vanhawks.com/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=xmas&utm_campaign=tweet

I'll start, the considerable safety features are somewhat negated by the lack of both brakes and foot retention.

However, I guess your trusty LBS would find no problem tweaking the vibrating handlebars for you once the warranty was out.

Your thoughts please

It's the video I'm referring to....

It seems like a reasonable solution to a problem no one has and a question no one asked.

I swear this has been brought up before? Anyway, it doesn't solve any of my problems and it looks shit.

Amazed no one has jumped on the company for selling a bike with no brakes nor foot retention.

It seems like a reasonable solution to a problem no one has and a question no one asked. +1

I don't have or want a bloody phone, part of what I like about riding is getting away from it all and the simplicity. Another point is that cyclists shouldn't rely on sensors to tell them what's going on behind them and I don't want my bars vibrating

and it looks shit.

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this
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looks like a create(wretched things) for the genitally deformed

The video is of a prototype bike. Production bikes have disc brakes and belt drive chains. They have PD8 dyno hubs, geared bikes use the NuVinci 360 cvt hub.
An interesting bike for the price. The 'safety' feature is a dangerous joke. You get about 0.2 seconds warning before the lorry runs you down.
Have you considered cycle training?
The anti-theft network seems to rely on another Vanhawk bike passing by theives den to pick up a signal before the battery fails or is diconnected.

It’s almost like a group of tech bods who don’t ride bikes got together and designed a bike through circle-jerkery alone.

Oh wait.

I worry that these alleged ‘safety’ features will encourage inexperienced cyclists to not rely on their own senses and develop their own road awareness.

Also, wot no rack/mudguard eyelets? Some commuter.

Unless I'm much mistaken, this is going to be based on a singular set of model geometries. This means that either orangutangs or T-Rexs will not be catered to. For a company reliant on market saturation this is a bit of a mistake. In fact commodity that depends this much on saturation without modular options seems a bit doomed to fail. Will they sell retrofit kits for people's existing bikes?

It also suggests a GPS routing along "safe/quiet" routes. I'd be interested in knowing whether you can adjust your own levels of risk aversion. Actually the whole premise of this being promoted as a commuting bike seems a bit flawed. If you're commuting, you'll probably not really need GPS to tell you how to get between home and work. Also, and this may just be me, but my commute varies during the week. My Tuesday commute is different because I leave early for a regular meeting that I need to attend with an early start. I don't feel inclined to avoid a complex juntion because it isn't as busy when I'm going through it. My Thursday commute is different because bin collections happen on a small ratrun that I use and I don't really want to be hung up waiting for the bin men to give me a space to get between the lorry and parked cars. It's little bits of local knowledge like this that GPS can't really contend with.