There’s no missing cyclists – or the zone of space you need to safely pass them – when they’ve got a ring of red light encircling them as they ride down the road. Michelin’s new open-source project, Bikesphere, features a light sensor and proximity detecting sensor that work together to monitor the environment around a cyclist and react accordingly if a car gets too close, pointing a double laser spotlight on the ground to define a safety area.

As it stands, riding a bike in an urban area can be a risky proposition, with more than 5,000 avoidable accidents happening every year due to cars passing cyclists at an unsafe distance.

During the day, the Bikesphere works like a normal light-detecting bike lamp, turning on when you go through dark areas as needed. By night, it’s ready to defend you, projecting a single-lined sphere for the entirety of your ride. When it can tell a car is coming, the light turns into a double line and starts to spin faster to alert both the cyclist and the driver.

Bikesphere is the first crowd-sourced idea to come to fruition through Michelin’s #TrendyDrivers movement, which aims to change the habits of drivers to make the roads safer. When an idea is approved, they fund the project to get it off the ground. Ultimately, the Bikesphere will be made public, so anyone who wants one can purchase the common components and download the plans to print the rest using standard 3D printers.

For a single day next month, locals and visitors will be able to experience Paris without motorized traffic, giving the city over to pedestrians and bikers. Free of traffic congestion, noise pollution and vehicle emissions, the Day Without Cars will transform the physical and auditory landscape, enabling views and revealing ambient sounds ordinarily drowned out by the urban cacophony on September 27th.

Timed to coincide with a United Nations climate conference and European Mobility Week, the move is partially a display of possibilities for car-free cities as well as a statement about the environment. The 1st through 7th, 10th and 11th arrondissements (city sections) will all participate; monuments and gathering spaces such as the Champs Élysées, the Bastille, and the Eiffel Tower are included as well.

Other metropolitan areas around the world including Montreal, Bogota, Mexico City and Ho Chi Minh City are following France’s lead and instituting similar vehicular restrictions to various degrees. In such cities, photographers will be able to stand in the streets, capturing unique shots of urban architecture and infrastructure without the risk of being run over. Facing increased traffic, cities like London and Los Angeles are already considering ways in which to permanently reduce congestion and give over areas to mass transit, cyclists and pedestrians.

Some cities have longer-term visions for a car-free future as well. In China, plans and budgets have been established for a car-free city built from scratch. In Abu Dhabi, a car-free, self-sufficient city is also in the works, though some question its feasibility. Meanwhile, Hamburg has firmly committed to a 20-year plan to eliminate cars, keeping routes for public transportation and emergency vehicles but otherwise handing city streets over to paths and trails for walkers and bikers.

Catering to some of the 170,000 cyclists that ride across London every day, this segregated bicycle lane will stretch from west to east, pass through the heart of the city and span 18 miles when completed, the longest of its kind on the continent. Backed by mayor Boris Johnson, a second route will also eventually span perpendicular to this first one, reaching south to north and crossing the first path in the middle of the city.

Allocating bikers lane space on par with that given to vehicles and separated by safety curbs, this plan represents a huge shift in how London treats cyclists and the largest such endeavor of its kind to date. Few long bike paths on the planet can boast such separation for bikers from city traffic, a move that makes bike lanes much more accessible to bikers of all ages and abilities and portends a far different future for cities currently congested with cars.

As The Guardian‘s Peter Walker describes, “The effect is humanizing, civilizing, relaxing, enchanting. It makes the city immediately more appealing. Beyond all that it also rebuts the perennial complaint that the push for London bike routes is the niche hobby horse of a small coterie of middle-class, male cyclists. The whole point is that if you create safer cycling you necessarily create more inclusive cycling.”

Building on a series original-but-modified proposals shown directly above and below, the new path with pass along the Victoria Embankment to connect Tower Hill and Paddington, re-purposing existing lanes used by motorists and linking up with a north-south route that would connect King’s Cross with Elephant and Castle.

While the removal of motorized vehicular space has drawn complaints from some, it fits London’s larger vision of reducing car traffic in and through the city (dovetailing with existing strategies including a hefty congestion tax).

Other cities will be looking to the results of this radical change, which could have significant global influence on urban design strategies around city cycling for years and decades to come. Perhaps it is too much to hope for as a realized project (due to potentially prohibitive construction costs), but lofty visions like the London SkyCycle also remain ideas worth striving toward with regards to the future of bike transit, both within and beyond England’s capital.