It's very hard to get blinded by a laser, but it's quite easy to get dazzled for a few seconds if one goes in your eye. Being dazzled for a few seconds usually isn't that dangerous unless you're, say, driving a car.
No sir, I don't like the idea that the inconsiderate laws-don't-apply-to-me cyclists I carefully avoid running over every day will suddenly be equipped with lasers which can shine into my eyes by accident.
But to get dazzled the viewer would have to be between the from of the bike and the ground in front of it. I don't imagine many car drivers would be there, but it a concern with children passing in front of the bike when it isn't in motion, say.
Being between the front of the bike and the ground isn't hard to imagine if the cyclist is cresting a hill.
Assuming the device is 2ft from the ground, and projecting an image 10ft out, that'd be mounted at an angle of 79° (with 90° meaning parallel to the ground). If you're coming up a symmetric 5° hill, and the beam goes over the crest, it'll go 115 feet before hitting ground. 6° hill, and it'll not hit ground until the descent ends.
(I have no idea where the device is mounted on the bike, or how far in front you'd have to project. Easily could be further up than 2ft, which would help, or further out than 10ft, which would hurt).
Very, very, very, very, very different. The lasers we are talking about are beams, which means they are not subject to significant intensity falloff over distance. Thus, the energy they put out at the source can be efficiently transmitted over great distances directly to your eyeball. This causes further problems when the laser can deliver enough energy to damage your eye, or even permanently destroy it, in less than the ~150 milliseconds it takes you to reflexively blink it. Run this thing over a bunch of broken glass and you will have legitimate problems with localized areas of dangerously high light intensity.
Also, lasers are not toys. Do not let children play with them. Do not let anyone "play" with the green ones or any stronger lasers. You are taking insane risks when you do; yes, you can probably keep it out of your eyes but it only takes a moment's inattention and you can be talking serious lifelong consequences. It's a poor tradeoff for entertainment purposes.
Not only is this design far, far too dangerous to let out into the public in a big way, even the testing was far more dangerous and hostile to the people in the area than the engineer realized.
And I've zapped myself several times deliberately, even holding the weak little class IIIa laser pointer right up to my eye to show people that the "dangers" are too often overstated. Granted, that's only for low-wattage laser pointers. There are high power lasers where the "do not look into laser with remaining eye" warning is absolutely correct, after all, as well as a lot of different things in between. Lasers aren't inherently dangerous after all simply because they're lasers, it's a matter of how much energy they're zapping your eyes with and for how long.
So I'd have to say, no. If reasonably engineered, this would be less likely to be harmful than someone's headlights shining in your eyes. They're so focused that they wouldn't hit you in the eye for very long given that you're a moving target likely to be several meters away from the bike.
No sir, I don't like the idea that the inconsiderate laws-don't-apply-to-me cyclists I carefully avoid running over every day will suddenly be equipped with lasers which can shine into my eyes by accident.