Skoda develops bike bell that can bypass noise-cancelling headphones, and then gives the technology away for free

When you think about new, exciting and innovative tech on bikes, I bet you don't think about bike bells.

But today, that's about to change, as I genuinely think this is one of the coolest and smartest innovations I've seen all year.

Forget 32inch wheels, 1x drivetrains, 42mm road tyres and 3D-printed saddles, this is the big one.

It's called the DuoBell, and it comes from car brand Škoda in conjunction with the University of Salford. Even more incredibly, the brand has decided not to gatekeep the tech for profit, but instead give it away to the world for free, to "make our cities safer."

Perhaps ironically, despite Škoda being a car brand and driving and cycling often being at odds, the problem this bell solves isn't one related to cars, but to pedestrians.

Škoda says pedestrian accidents have gone up by 30% in recent years, and attributes some of that increase to pedestrians wearing noise-cancelling headphones.

In recent years, noise-cancelling headphones have become prevalent, and it's not uncommon for pedestrians to wear them while walking on shared-use paths, crossing the road, or in many other walks of life.

Among the noises cancelled by said headphones is the ding of a traditional bike bell, the polite "excuse me, on your right", or perhaps the buzz of your noisy freehub as you coast up behind the newly oblivious jogger.

They work by pairing a microphone, a computer chip and a clever algorithm. The microphone listens to ambient noise, and the algorithm flips the soundwave upside down, playing it back to you to effectively cancel out the soundwave when it reaches your eardrum.

Škoda's DuoBell exploits a weakness in said algorithm, with a short, sharp sound that is the perfect frequency – 750 hertz – to bypass over-ear headphones' foam padding, and is short enough that the algorithm can't process it and flip it before it's over. They then added in a second frequency at 2000Hz, which people actually recognise as a bike bell, and DuoBell was born.

In testing, the brand found that the DuoBell was consistently audible from 50 feet (15.24m) further away than traditional bells when wearing headphones with the noise-cancelling feature activated.

What I love about this story most, though, is that Škoda isn't gatekeeping the technology for its own profit. It is instead just giving the science away to the world for free via an open-source whitepaper, in a bid to make our cities safer. Excellent stuff.

That does mean you'll have to wait a while until you see noise-cancelling bells in our best bike bells buying guide, though.