[DigitalToday reporter Jinju Hong] Czech automaker Skoda has unveiled a bicycle bell called DuoBell designed to alert pedestrians even if they are wearing noise-cancelling earphones.

An online outlet, Gigazine, reported on April 9 that the product was designed to respond to a rise in pedestrian-cyclist collisions.

Skoda sees collisions with pedestrians rising as demand for bicycles increases worldwide. It cited the wider use of noise-cancelling earphones as one cause of the increase in accidents. The company then began developing a bell that produces sounds that are not easily removed by noise cancelling.

Unlike a standard bicycle bell, DuoBell produces 2 types of sound. One is a tone in a frequency band that is relatively difficult for noise cancelling to remove. Skoda said joint research with the University of Salford in Britain confirmed that sounds in the 750 to 780 Hz range are hard to cancel, and the product was tuned to 780 Hz.

The other is a very fast and irregular sound. Noise-cancelling earphones work by generating sound in the opposite phase of ambient noise to cancel it out. DuoBell was designed to produce sounds so fast and irregular that an earphone processing chip struggles to respond in real time. Skoda explained that this approach can cut through noise cancelling.

The design also reflects the brand’s automotive design language. The colour and surface finish use the same design system applied to Skoda vehicles. Still, the key of this product is functional verification rather than its appearance.

Skoda said it trial-distributed DuoBell in London in February 2026 to Deliveroo couriers. It said the results showed the bell could effectively make pedestrians wearing noise-cancelling earphones recognise a bicycle’s presence from as far as 22 metres away.

The product shows that warning tools are changing in step with changes in the mobility environment, rather than simply introducing an accessory. That is because relying only on a traditional bell tone can weaken approach alerts when pedestrians actively block outside noise through earphones. In such situations, DuoBell is closer to an attempt to target what warning sounds are actually heard in road environments shared by cyclists and pedestrians.