Wheely good: Juliet England meets the young inventor of a new safety device for deaf cyclists

Divine Okoroji, 22, like many soon-to-be graduates, is currently awaiting the results of his four-year BA degree in Industrial Design and Technology from London’s Brunel University. Unlike other finalists, however, he’s the inventor of a new device which could revolutionise life for deaf cyclists by helping them understand the location of nearby traffic they wouldn’t otherwise be able to detect.

Okoroji, who spent his childhood in County Donegal, Ireland, before moving to London as a teenager and says he has always had a creative streak, first came up with the idea during his third-year business placement with engineering firm Charles Austen Pumps in West Byfleet.

He told Limping Chicken by video call: “I admit I am not an especially committed cyclist myself! But I would cycle the 40-minutes each way to and from work during my sandwich year. I noticed on my commute that I wasn’t always able to hear passing cars, and that this was potentially quite a big problem.

“I wasn’t sure whether any vehicles were coming up behind me, so I had to adapt to that and it would make me feel quite anxious.”

At the same time, standard hearing aids can sometimes be less than ideal if you’re on a bike, since they can magnify wind and traffic sounds without giving cyclists spatial awareness of their proximity to vehicles, or an understanding of where the sound is coming from. So his invention is not primarily designed to be worn with a hearing aid.

Although Okoroji comes from a large hearing family, he began to notice issues around the age of seven when answering the phone. He has no hearing in one ear and, although he has worn hearing aids, prefers to rely on his own coping strategies. So he understands and has experienced the frustrations at first hand.

He was also aware of the UK’s ‘bike boom’ sparked by Covid – sales of cycles and related accessories soared by 45% last year – and wanted deaf people to be part of this and feel that they could get on a bike with confidence.

And when he needed to do a final-year project which presented a solution to a problem, he decided to create a device to help deaf cyclists, working on the project daily between last September and last month.

The result is SONEAR, which monitors traffic via ultrasonic sensors so the cyclist appreciates when a vehicle is nearby by sending small vibrations to the back of their head. As the car approaches, these vibrations intensify, so that the cyclists gains a sense of how close they are to it.

It’s designed to be worn without a helmet, and Okoroji stresses that this is a decision backed up by his research.

“Talking to the deaf community, I found that they chose not to wear helmets because this made them feel more comfortable, and they felt that cars gave them more space that way. And I wanted to create something that really targeted what the community wanted and needed.”

To gain a good understanding of the issues involved, Okoroji contacted dozens of deaf cyclists and put out a survey on his social media accounts.

He tested the invention himself and on campus with 20 fellow students, who tried out the device on wheeled office chairs rather than cycles for safety reasons.

“I also learned how little of charity funding goes on researching projects like these for deaf people; less than 79p per deaf person in the UK. I was really surprised at that.”

And the device is being shown this month at Made in Brunel in London’s Oxo Tower. This is Brunel Design School’s flagship exhibition.

Okoroji is also hoping to take SONEAR further by working with RNID on it, and is being advised on the project by a leading research academic at Southampton University’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research.

Over the summer, when not applying for jobs, Okoroji hopes to develop his invention to make it more efficient and compact than it is in its current form. He has also applied for the prestigious Dyson Award for design, and should know the outcome of his submission by the autumn.

Above all, he hopes to develop SONEAR into a commercially attractive product that will be sold by retailers such as Halfords. However, he is still deciding at the moment how much each unit could sell for.

Finally, what about the obvious question – when is he applying to Dragon’s Den?

“Yes, people are always asking me about that,” he chuckles. “I guess I should apply.”

• Made in Brunel runs from June 16-19 at The Bargehouse, Oxo Tower, London