LED-Lit Headphones From Spark Provides Extra Safety Feature For Pedestrians

Spark Headphones has an LED-lit headphone that it listed on Kickstarter. The headphone has a set of wires that feed LED light through the cords. By providing more visibility, it gives users an extra safety feature especially at night.

Consumers who would back through donations the LED-lit headphone on Kickstarter would receive the device by August and September, Forbes reports. Vikrant Rayate, the founder of Spark Headphones, says the gadget gives people a way to express themselves, while the startup provides them a safety feature.

He explains that walkers and runners who listen to music while exercising could not hear their surroundings. Motorcycle riders, in turn, find it hard to spot people running on the streets, particularly at night. Rayate’s experience as a motorcycle driver led him to develop the LED-lit headphone by incorporating the flashing lights within the headphone’s design.

A USB controller near the mini-jack charges the LED-lit headphone. Rayate explains that the controller is big enough to hold easily even if the user wears gloves. However, it is not big enough to tuck into a pocket. A large button on the controller allows the user to toggle the lighting. The light it emits is blue or purple, depending on the user’s choice of color.

According to Kickstarter, the LED-lit headphone has received so far $7,430 pledges out of the $10,000 goal. The device has 56 backers, while Spark Headphones has 31 days more to go to raise the balance of $2,570 to reach its goal. The project would only be funded if the startup would reach the $10,000 goal by June 11, 2017, Sunday, at 11:01 a.m. PDT. For backers who would pledge $119 or more, they would get one LED-lit headphone and save $60 since its retail price would be $179 when it hits the market.

The development of the LED-lit headphone by Spark is timely because the latest report from the Governors Highway Safety Association says there was an 11 percent increase in pedestrian deaths in 2016 compared to 2015. An observation of safety experts is the growing number of victims listening to music with their headphones on, Holland Sentinel reports.