“Florida handed out around 500 tickets last year to drivers who veered too close to cyclists when passing. But only eight drivers were actually found guilty.

Like 26 other states, Florida has a law requiring cars to give bikes at least a three-foot gap of space. The problem is that it’s fairly impossible for a cop to judge exactly how far away a driver is and issue a ticket (or win a case if they do). So a new gadget uses sonar to measure.

With the device attached to a handlebar, a bike cop gets a ping if a driver gets inside the three-foot zone. One of the inventors compares it to a radar gun that an officer would use to see if someone’s speeding. “I think it’s a fine enough line that you really do need some technological proof,” says Christopher Stanton, co-founder of Codaxus, the Austin-based engineering firm that created C3FT (the name spells out “see three feet”).

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