This is a great idea though, and definitely something that more bikes should come stock with. There's a very clear benefit for safety.
For some reason the idea of a bike interfering with brake controls seems like it could feel unsafe if the system isn't designed really well. Extremely low margin for error when it comes to braking on a 2 wheel vehicle especially in suboptimal conditions.
I could see ABS braking being fine for the back tire, but the idea of automatic braking on the front tire would scare me.
edit: Rear wheel locking gives a bit more time to react.
Personally the main safety benefit is for emergency braking in wet conditions. ABS also allows to use full brakes in the wet without worrying so much about falling over. That's the real benefit, real-world it shortens your stopping distance because of that increased confidence in using the brake.
I think this point is worth emphasizing. You'll hear from a lot of folks on motorcycle forums that ABS will increase stopping distance. Which is true for great drivers performing threshold braking. How many motorcycle riders actually practice front braking on their non ABS bike until they lock up the front wheel to really learn the limits of themselves and their bike? For most people, you'll be able to use more brakes and stop in a shorter distance in more conditions with ABS while maintaining control of the vehicle.
I recently crashed cornering during a light mist and now I'm on the looking for anything that helps lean slippage. I know you can't fix stupid but still hoping something is out there. My old and busted vstrom needs an upgrade.
Many bikes also come with cornering ABS, meaning that if the motorcycle is at an angle, the ABS comes in gradually.
Overall ABS is pretty much a "solved" problem right now, on motorcycles 2012+ at the very least. Earlier ABS wasn't that great. I had a BMW F800GS in 2010 and the ABS was horrible on bumpy roads. You basically had no braking if it kicked in.
Just to be clear, Anti-Lock Braking (ABS) is different than Automated Emergency Braking (AEB).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_emergency_braking_sy...
Obviously it's tilt- and acceleration-aware, so I'm confide it's safe.
It’s not automatic braking. It’s automatically letting off the brakes for a fraction of a second to prevent locking up, aka anti-lock braking system
If it does kick in you get a slight pulsing on the leaver which means unless you are emergency braking, back off.
As far as the front goes, you never want the front to lock as you are almost certainly going down.
For off-road abs modes normally they turn rear off completely so you can deliberately lock it and decrease the sensitivity on the front but still keep the abs on for the front.
1. ABS on motorbikes has been proven to prevent lock-ups and therefore accidents, especially among newer riders who are more likely to grab all the brakes in situations where modulation of brake application is required to prevent an accident.
2. Traditionalists say that ABS keeps new riders from having to learn to correctly modulate the brakes and thus keeps them reliant on ABS forever, and that experienced riders can stop quicker without ABS. (The last point is technically true but it requires a highly-skilled rider and a certain set of conditions.)
ABS is bikes IS typically designed very well. (Although I have to take the Internet's word for it since my bike is a 1979 GS850G.)
This isn't mentioned in the video, but ABS also enables more aggressive use of linked brake systems, which also improve worst-case safety when a rider panics and uses only one brake or the wrong brake.
You should ensure there's no way the new addition could prevent the brake light from working if the electronics were to fail (either electrically, software glitch, corrosion, bad connection, etc). Because failing to light the brake lights upon braking could directly cause an accident.
Secondary perhaps (though still important) is to prevent false positives (brake light illuminating when just driving along normally). That's still bad, but at least other drivers would be suspicious of it and it's more obvious.
For field installs perhaps the low-temp soldering butt splices would work well? That would be my go-to in your shoes. It does require cutting and stripping wires, which has its own issues if done by the layperson, but it does connect and encapsulate the joint in a way that should be very robust to vibration and to environmental contamination/corrosion.
Another advantage of this is it simplifies installation for the bike owner. Just mount the controller and connect the plugs.
What's the NRE/tooling and marginal cost to produce a harness variant, and how many units with that variant will you sell? Will people buy the device without the harness adapter?
OE connectors are hard to get, they're typically not some stock Molex or Deutsch dealy-o. I've worked on projects where we 3D printed whole connector blocks to try to do get mating to OE ECUs. It kinda sucks, and you need a whole lot of volume to support that kind of engineering.
I have had many, many soldered splices fail on generators, marine engines, other long running equipment.
They just break where the copper meets the solder joint. Copper generally has poor fatigue characteristics, depending on the alloy.
Some of this also comes down to harness design and how it's put back together after the splice. Ideally, the exposure of the splice itself to flexing is very low. I reckon if it's strain relieved/mechanically fastened well and encapsulated, it doesn't really matter what style of splice you use.
I agree that soldering probably won’t produce any issues if the wire is not subjected to significant flexure or vibration, or if it properly strain relieved and secured to a bulkhead so there is no movement at the limit of solder wicking. It’s just that I’m usually too lazy to do that perfectly, so I tend towards more forgiving solutions in vehicles and equipment. But sometimes, solder is the one true way, and I always feel better about soldered joints even if I know I’m statistically wrong.
As for wire being 100 percent copper? I’m not sure, but I have definitely noticed different rigidity of copper fibers. Might be impurities, annealing, or work hardening from the drawing process… but there is definitely variation. Some wire can be really susceptible to fatigue cracking, while others seem relatively immune. Not sure of the why.
Also, don’t even get me started on copper plated aluminum fiber wires.
That being said, in 20 years of riding motorcycles and being an ATGATT (all the gear, all the time) kind of rider, I'm mixed on the need for this. It's something I have thought about doing with a direct hardwire to the throttle, but I can't come up with a situation where I genuinely think it will stop a crash. Maybe if someone is tailgating you, but you should be readily letting them pass rather than relying on their reaction skills anyway. Anything that is sudden and requires a large -dv/dt, you are going to hit your brakes. Engine braking alone is usually used in situations where the road/conditions dictates it, so other drivers are naturally slowing down too.
But I suppose it is also an "it can only help" type product.
The Technology Connections YT guy has a whole piece analyzing tail lights and I agree with him.
Is that a good idea? A flashing brake light could appear as if the brake was let go, which is the exact opposite of the message you would want to send in that case.
Or maybe we are talking about flashing between two different illuminated states?
I think there were also bugs on some Hyundais where they wouldn't stop or start or whatever, but I think that was sorted. With my Skoda I can see the braking lights go on when I change a higher regeneration step.
In fact this will make traffic worse due to stop n go effect from brakelights triggering more brakelights instead of coasting.
Granted, it's also a red (small) pick-up truck, so pretty visible.
Def not a daily event but not unheard of.
Not that trying to shed tailgaters or trigger-happy brake lights are foolproof. A couple decades ago, my car was totaled by a rear-end collision. I was stopped and stuck in the traffic at a red light. The at-fault driver popped over a little hill with her nose stuck in a map - failing to notice me, the other vehicles, or the red light, in time.
With either one, any need-to-brake situation gets more complex - you need to decide "brake pedal, engine, or both?". But I'm not driving manuals because I want driving to be super-simple.
After taking a motorcycle safety course (in which they teach applying the brake to trigger the lights when engine braking to alert cars behind you )
I did some anecdotal testing / started triggering the brake lights when engine braking in the car. While not effective for everyone behind me, triggering the brake lights did seem to increase the distance people began to slow at, and also their following distance increased.
I was once rear ended, while I was completely stopped, with a train going by in front of me. Since it was a flat level surface I had let me foot off the brake.
I do wonder if I had still had the brake applied if the person would have noticed. (However, this is a poor example as the driver who rear ended me was an unlicensed 16 year old driving illegally ).
While on my motorcycle, I try to always trigger my brake lights. I will trigger them rapidly in scenarios where I have sufficient stopping distance but I would be doing a more aggressive stop in a car as the flashing does seem to get more attention.
In best cases this brake gives a bit of feedback when it engages the light but not yet engage the actual brake.
You are free to use this technique to signal "back off" whenever you're engine braking or before you brake or even when you're not even braking but don't like the tailgater
Especially important when engine braking down large hills, as I notice people don’t always seem to realize how rapidly they are approaching you if they don’t receive a braking signal.
This isn't obvious to someone who has no idea. I just assumed it's an aftermarket adjustment for people that like flashy vehicles.
Any driver should know what a brake light means, I don't think that it's an intentional flash feature is important to know.
This makes it an arms race because the average driver loses sensitivity and then what used to be enough is now too subdued and unsafe (even if technically enough by law). Reminds me of how some regions require ad breaks to have audio not louder than the main production, while others are just straight up loudness wars on your ears
There's something to be said for setting a standard and keeping driving competence high and being less annoying to others including pedestrians.
(A bike is a slightly different story, it's harder to see how far away is a solo light. But then this is also a culture where half the riders believe that deafening bystanders is important for safety so sometimes hard to sympathize)
Throttle position sensor would be another data source, but model-specific.
The benefit of this is tool is that it reduces cognitive load while also working in emergency situations where I’m more focused on operating the motorcycle than signaling to others.
Mind you, that this is not enabled in all countries. In the USA the rear fog lights turn on in addition to the brake lights under heavy braking, as flashing the lights weren't allowed.
They remain on until you no longer depress the brakes.
Unsure if they're allowed right now, or whether the ones you see are aftermarket mods.
For BMW you can change the coding (configuration) relatively easy.
There is also a difference in 3 flashes when you touch the brakes, constant flashing while pressing the brakes, or only flashing under having braking.
I can't imagine driving in stop&go traffic where all brake lights are constantly flashing.
Over easter I had the displeasure of driving cca 1500km road with family and we experienced quite a few 130kmh -> full stop without warning situations that one barely manages even when breaking full and heavily relies on all others doing the same. In one of the situations a car right in front of us didnt manage and hit already-crashed cars in front of it in billiard style, plastics and glass flying everywhere, luckily nobody was injured but cars were in pieces.
Second case next day - again full stop out of blue, ahead, we & after us managed within 3-4m of each other, but cars after that didnt, again billiard that travelled all the way up to us (we ended up with few scratches on back spoiler, I moved our car a bit ahead when I heard big bangs behind, avoiding bigger damage to us).
One only has a split second to realize how quickly that car ahead is closing in in such scenarios if you dont have other info. Could save hundreds of lives each year easily and easy to implement.
That is not a factory feature, it's almost certainly a dealer-installed piece of junk like this (https://pulseprotects.com/product-info/) which the dealer almost certainly charged a stupid amount of money for, and as noted it's not actually legal in the US.
Around me the local Hyundai/Kia chain loves to install those, and I hate them.
The only way to catch something like this would be a road driving test by the inspector, and even here in Europe this is not required.
> According to a document by SafeLite of America, Inc., that you enclosed, its product Safe-T-Stop "will pulse [the center high mounted brake light] for approximately 6 seconds and reactivate if the brakes are reapplied." You read S5.5.10(d) of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 as requiring "that the third brake light must be wired to be steady-burning," and that you believe that Safe-T-Stop "contravenes this requirement of the standard by varying the brightness of the light."
> We confirm your interpretation. S5.5.10(a), (b), and (c) list the motor vehicle lamps that may flash when they are operated. No stop lamp is among the lamps listed. S5.5.10(d) requires all other lamps to be wired to be steady burning, thus including all stop lamps. Standard No. 108 does not allow a stop lamp that pulses, and a vehicle with a stop lamp that pulses does not meet Federal requirements.
It's clear that there's not much enforcement, since all the dealers I've visited near me install these things by default. If you commit to a car that's not yet delivered, you can negotiate to exclude these, or you can have them remove it (but they'll most likely have cut into the factory harness to install it, so the wiring harness has been modified, which is a negative IMHO).
Personally, I find these devices to be pretty terrible. I would be fine with flashing for high intensity braking, but the flashing is attention grabbing by design, and it's inappropriate in a lot of situations as it distracts from gathering awareness of the surroundings.
Steady burning. Must be activated upon application of the service brakes. When optically combined with a turn signal lamp, the circuit must be such that the stop signal cannot be activated if the turn signal lamp is flashing. May also be activated by a device designed to retard the motion of the vehicle.
(a) Any motor vehicle may also be equipped with a system in which an amber light is center mounted on the rear of a vehicle to communicate a component of deceleration of the vehicle, and which light pulses in a controlled fashion at a rate which varies exponentially with a component of deceleration.
(b) Any motor vehicle may be equipped with two amber lamps on the rear of the vehicle which operate simultaneously with not more than four flashes within four seconds after the accelerator pedal is in the deceleration position and which are not lighted at any other time. The lamps shall be mounted at the same height, with one lamp located on each side of the vertical centerline of the vehicle, not higher than the bottom of the rear window, or if the vehicle has no rear window, not higher than 60 inches. The light output from each of the lamps shall not exceed 200 candlepower at any angle horizontal or above. The amber lamps may be used either separately or in combination with another lamp.
(c) Any stoplamp or supplemental stoplamp required or permitted by Section 24603 may be equipped so as to flash not more than four times within the first four seconds after actuation by application of the brakes.
In Europe, a lot of modern cars have a similar feature. When braking particular hard (eg: a sudden emergency stop from highway speeds) the brake lights will flash rapidly to warn drivers behind you. It’s a very good safety feature, IMO. But not legal in North America?
Or are you saying that you don’t want them to think you have a skill issue ?
I live in a semi mountainous area, where people driving automatics ride their brakes most of the way down the mountains. (Relatively small mountains, elevations ranging from 1,900-2,700 with the surrounding area around 1,000-1,100 elevation. So not the same necessity of engine braking as somewhere out west where the elevation is 3-6k average with mountains up to 12-14k).
holding your speed or decellerating mildly is not the same as braking. if i gear down into a higher rpm and hold my speed, or perhaps decel ever so slightly - its not worth alerting the driver behind you. most people over-react to brake lights and will see your brakes as "I should apply brakes too" when in this particularly case, they should not.
I can't think of a single circumstance where compression braking should cause a brake light to illuminate. the rate of decelleration is so small compared to even a gentle tap of the brakes, that it will merely confuse drivers behind you.
> It turned out that when I accelerate strongly, I pull the bike back, at some point in the rotation of the pedals. This is rightfully detected as a sudden deceleration of the bicycle.
I guess on a much heavier motorcycle the deceleration of the motorcycle is actually a meaningful indicator of the combination driver+motorcycle slowing down.
https://www.bumm.de/en/products/dynamo-rucklichter/produkt/3...?
https://www.bumm.de/en/products/e-bike-r%C3%BCcklichter/pare...?
The section 62 of the Highway Traffic Act says this:
> Intermittent red light restricted
> (14) Subject to subsections (14.1), (15) and (17.1), no person shall use a lamp, other than turning signal lamps or the vehicular hazard warning signal lamps commonly known as four way flashers, that produces intermittent flashes of red light.
There is an exemption for bicycles but not motorcycles.
The big difference being left hand leaver on a motorcycle is the clutch, rear brake is right foot, on a scooter, no clutch so the left hand leaver is the rear break.
When I first got the scooter I was expecting the obvious accidental muscle memory confusion with the left leaver when swapping vehicles. For some reason it just never happened, never accidentally gone for the clutch on the scooter and never accidentally gone for the rear brake on the bike.
(Blipping the throttle accidentally should never cause an emergency unless other things are already going wrong: for example, if you are riding a bike whose power is way beyond your skill level or you are following someone too closely.)
My riding mower is tank-steer (zero turn)... pretty hard to use those skills on a car. But steering wheels basically work the same on all the equipment I've got with those; some easier to turn than others depending on geometry and power assist. The pedals are more likely to be different --- the mower has a friction lever on a panel to set the throttle / engine speed and levers you hold to go forward and back on right and left (so this does steering too); the tractor has similar throttle level, and then a pedal that you rotate to go forward or back with both wheels (all wheels if you put it into 4x4) and it has a splitable brake pedal if you want to brake on one side or the other.
But yeah; none of that makes it hard to go back and drive a car. Other than sometimes it'd be nice to do some tight turns at the expense of my tires if I could control each side individually.
As an avid mountain bike cyclist back in France, I hung to what seemed familiar - which worked well enough until the first sharp bend came... It came way too fast, I panicked, cycling reflexes took over, I shifted my weight back and pressed both handle levers hard - getting the (to a cyclist) very unexpected result of both disengaging the clutch and thus losing all engine braking while locking the front wheel hard (why did they put the front break where the rear, which helps me control slides, is supposed to be ?)... I was catapulted, followed by the bike... Nothing broken - just bruises, rashes and the flattened ego of a lucky idiot.
As a daily cyclist, being a motorcycle passenger on big engines always terrifies me: I'm on two wheels, with bicycle-like positions and trajectories... But everything happens monstrously too fast, my instincts for braking and acceleration are all out of calibration, so I always feel that we cannot possibly survive the next turn !
So, yes - I recommend not mixing bicycling and motorcycling.
Wish it were cheaper, but was a worthwhile investment for me.
Also, consider looking into airbag vests if you ride regularly. Also expensive but (supposedly) make a huge difference in crash outcomes.
Now in regen the brake lights come on above a certain harvest level.
> Apparently, motorcycles can
> brake even if you don't use
> the brake
If you gear down (you are cruising in fourth gear and 'gear down' to third gear), your vehicle's speed will reduce.
Brake lights are triggered by the brake pedal or lever/pedal on a motorcycle.
In the case of engine braking, the brake lights are not triggered. Drivers behind them can't anticipate stopping without such a signal.
Try it yourself! Some automatic cars, you can gear down, or just pull your parking brake a little. Cars behind you will come dangerously close to hitting you. Also, don't try this.
Wait, do new cars' parking brakes trigger the brake lights? I also wonder about regenerative braking in electric cars where they slow down simply by lifting your foot off the accelerator.
It's not even specific to the ones with the stick. I happen to enjoy and prefer vehicles with three pedals, but I can say from personal experience that a Ford AODE, 4R70W, or 4R100 will hit hard enough to scare passengers when you drop a gear at highway speed.
A Chrysler 45RFE on the other hand will make a lot more noise but basically no braking effort when you downshift.
> Where do you ship to?
> Basically to every European country (-including Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), but in fact we accept and ship orders worldwide. However some markets might not be setup for automated checkout. If you are experiencing difficulty for shipping to a certain country, contact us so that we can manually create a draft order for you to review and complete.
Also a helmet cam does wonders for wannabe-tailgaters
I’m glad to see this was already posted. I wear mine when I ride my 1500w ebike around and I feel so much safer with it. It’s really bright too!
[1]https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcyc...
https://safetrec.berkeley.edu/2023-safetrec-traffic-safety-f... (Ctrl+F "Crash Location of Motorcycle Fatal Crashes")
Most Americans use freeways, and most do not use motorcycles. It's always hard to compare a rare thing to a common thing, it always has surprising problems. It's like when people on Reddit worry about radon in their basement, but the incidence rate of whatever cancer it was associated with is so low anyway.
What about agency? "Don't worry about kids choking on Legos, kids don't die from choking on Legos" - but that's because parents well informed and really vigilant about it, compared to say batteries. Motor riders avoid freeways.
Here's a video of the NYC Pool Noodle Bike Ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97YJOQRQ4Ds&ab_channel=Stree...
What bike do you ride, and what vehicles are you calling trucks? Specifically.
https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/motorcycle-industry-q1...
Do we have stats on whether more sports bike riders are involved in crashes that bikes with better visibility?
You can use insurance rates as a loose proxy- sportbikes are between one and three orders of magnitude more expensive to insure than adventure bikes, touring bikes or cruisers. But I suspect that has more to do with the average age of the riders.
On a sorta dual sport like a Kawasaki KLR650 you get peak torque from the engine at around 2500 RPM, which is comfortably in school zone speed limit territory.
Something like the Yamaha R6 won't really start feel like it's pulling until you get the engine above 8000 RPM at least and then you getting peak torque until around 12,000 RPM. By then you're doing 70kph to 90kph in first gear.
Sports bikes are more comfortable ridden aggressively. Unfortunately that also gives a lot of riders a false sense of skill; right until they moment run into a situation above their skill level and they crash while panicking.
I don't have a brake light on my helmet on motorcycle but I added DOT-C2 tape to the back and sides of it, stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/THKULKME-Reflective-Reflector-Waterpr...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/10vb432/f250s_just_...
The roof on the old F150 is barely above the door sill on the new truck.
...and then people go and put bigger rims and lift kits on them.
Seems like something else might be at play. If it is more SUVs and Pickups then I think a brake light helmet would do a lot considering the danger those cars present is being harder to see those below them. But if it is something else, then maybe not as good of a solution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU
They're hideous too.
Trucks in particular are apparently being purposed built to kill.
While going over the hood is going to hurt, and can kill you, the other options are much more likely to kill you.
Driving crazily fast in residential areas, rolling through stop signs, blowing off yellow and even red lights, ignoring turn signals, aggressively tailgating cars, trucks, even motorcyclists like myself, tapping away at their phones and steering with their knees. I think I see just about every variation of all of these things at least several times a week, to the extent that I have thought about the idea of creating some kind of org or foundation or even just a blog to advocate a return to taking driving seriously. I don't have a lot of confidence that I could make a difference though. I suspect a lot of the problem is simply many more cars on infrastructure that we haven't put enough money into for decades, but I'm no expert.
My recent conclusion is that efforts are worth it even if we're pessimistic about outcome. Often times it is hard to get positive feedback from people you're helping to consider their own behavior even if they don't acknowledge you.
I argue we should start with the A-pillar. It's not just the big fat American trucks. Every car that is allowed to roll onto the streets is required to have a certain amount of airbag and the push for this seems to have really bad side effects on aspects of safety for everyone not inside the vehicle.
Look at the visibility difference in a 1980s pickup truck and compare it to 2024 model year anything and you would likely feel claustrophobic pretty quickly.
Not true at all except for the lowest-sitting cruisers. Most bikes put you eye level with an SUV driver and taller bikes above.
I see other people saying the same thing, but it totally defies my intuition.
Isn't the seat in an SUV objectively much higher up than the seat of a bike? Aren't your feet much higher on the floor of an SUV, than on a bike?
What am I missing here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
And trucks and SUVs continue to further dominate the marketplace with some automakers no longer selling sedans at all, making it increasingly difficult to not buy an SUV or "crossover."
Those trucks and SUVs, particularly those made by American and Japanese companies, are focused on "aggressive" looks, which means a giant, angry looking, flat-face nose which is incredibly lethal when hitting a person.
https://www.indieauto.org/2022/11/28/designer-of-2020-gmc-si...
"The front end was always the focal point. The rest of the truck is supporting what the rest of the truck is communicating… we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look."
And of course who do these vehicles appeal to? What kind of behavior do they encourage? Every time I'm tailgated it's some dickhead in one of these giant angry-faced trucks.
It's taken the auto "journalists" a while to catch up but they're finally pointing it out:
https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/mean-machines...
I've got the rear flasher on my road bike tucked as high under the seat as it can get, but even with a large frame bike and relaxed commuting (non-aero) posture I'm shorter than the hood lots of full-size SUVs and pickups, much less the seat.
I agree with the other commenter that a 360 cam on top of the helmet has been the most important thing for deterring tailgating and road rage. I've added reflective tape on the frame, the blinking blinking lights under the seat, a headlight on the handlebars and a headlamp with front white and rear red light, and my backpack has a nearly fluorescent neon green cover. Those all help reduce the "Oops, didn't see you there while looking at my phone" close calls, but do nothing to reduce intentional harassment - that's the function of the camera.
[1] https://www.rivbike.com/products/dyno-rack-light?srsltid=Afm...
They started via a kickstarter in 2015: https://www.google.com/search?q=lumos+helmet+history
...they kindof "always" had reliability issues w/ detecting braking accurately, I think switching between the handlebar remote/sensor or phone sensors. It's an existing product with a direct analogue to your project goal, and minimally you could trawl for contacts within customer reviews or online reports to get some ideas about the good/bad in this problem space.
Beware of patents (as relevant), but it's a noble and useful project and goal.
* don't do this
What's more, notwithstanding the freakouts from Europeans and blue-staters about so-called "gun culture," you have no right to employ a firearm anywhere in the US unless someone is actively threatening to kill or maim you or a person near you. Not because you got in a road-rage pissing contest.
If anything, bringing a gun into a situation like that is a great way to get a felony assault/brandishing charge and lose your ability to own a gun period.
Think more like "I can be really distracted and suddenly swerve because my toddler threw their drink at me".
Like with L-plate drivers. Be very careful, don't hate, they're just danger to themselves and everyone else around. They're not entitled, they're warning.
Becoming a parent brought upon quite an increase in my empathy for other parents.
Alas, even the banana stopped working, though. Road cycling is horrible now. Too many cars.
Another reason may be that they are more concerned about scratching their paint than they are about your well-being.
Is it safe in case of an accident? The helmet is quite round, and the not round shape may be a problem.
The insight about how little attention goes into motorcycle specific safety tech is spot on. The market tends to over-index on cars, but the stakes for motorcyclists are arguably higher per mile. Would love to see more open source or modular frameworks emerge in this space something others could build on top of, regionally or by use-case.
Curious if you explored anything around passive detection (weather, terrain, phone telemetry) or if most of your work focused on rider input and behavior?
I suspect a lot of the effort here is marketing, so you might extract extra value (and do more good) with a complementary product.
A big benefit might come from controllable red light and warning bell for the rider when you're more than 15% over speed limit. Speed is the biggest risk by far, and also the risk you can control (since no brake light can defend against the inattentive driver). It's way too easy to not realize how fast you're going.
Indeed, for that you could also factor in stopping distances. Starting out with lighter, nimble bikes, I got in real trouble with the 650+ lb monsters that dither about stopping. Those would get a lower threshold. And you'd apply a higher threshold for open road vs. traffic, etc.
Then build out a UI workflow and logging, and it might grow into an interesting intelligent copilot product line addressing all the pilot-controllable factors. As a motorcyclist, it's really on you to save your own bacon.
There isn't always have a choice. If you open a gap in traffic, another car will simply change lanes into it.
> no method is truly safe
That's not a reason for not making things safer.
Nothing is perfect.
If you are thinking commercial you may want to look into IP issues to see if there are active patents (probably expired by now?)
As far as design choices, based on my journeys in similar types of projects: (just my$.02, not a critique)
USB will be a significant point of failure. The connector has voltage present and electrochemical activity will destroy the connector over time unless you can keep it in a clean, low humidity environment. Consider a different connector or a wireless SOC to eliminate this point of failure and make a completely potted unit possible. If you use usb, make sure there is no voltage normally present, even from the data connections, and you have a good watertight plug for the access port. Everything gets wet on bikes. Everything. nRF52840 or ESP32C3 would be my go to choices here, but there are a lot of excellent candidates. BLE is probably the protocol you will want to use. This will facilitate making a simple app to do firmware updates and feature adjustments.
Consider eliminating the need for RPM input. This will be a significant point of failure and your greatest installation headache across different motorcycles.
As a failsafe, control the lamp output pass-through with a pulled-up mosfet of at least 50a capacity (you won’t ever see this high current, but it protects from bulb changing short circuits and other unknowns)
An Infineon BTS5016-2EKA or its low side equivalent is probably a great choice, and gives you both of the switches you need in one package, for less than $3, with full protection features. ( I assume you will need one to interrupt existing signaling and one to light where’s there is no activation from the brake switches)
The main thing is the lamp must light with regular inputs even if the circuit loses power or the chip gets a hole drilled in it. If it comes on when it shouldn’t, that is also bad, but not as bad.
Idk what sensor you are using, but consider the icm20948, it’s not too expensive ($3-4) and it has onboard sensor fusion. Only downside is it’s 1.8v, but if you use the nRf52840 that’s not an issue. Even so, level conversion isn’t too big a deal. Sensor fusion will greatly simplify understanding what’s going on.
Since power consumption is not critical I would consider using an ML algorithm on the sensor data to detect hazard conditions, lie downs, etc and filter out steep uphill/downhill false activation/failure to activate.
You could collect the data easily and train a simple model with off the shelf tools designed specifically for doing that kind of thing with MCUs. I forget the name but it’s commonly used for voice action or gesture training. You might want to train on a few bikes though, especially ones with different vibration frequencies.
Now you can add a subscription model for premium flashing features and “enhanced AI” with in-app GPT4 access to an interactive tour guide and a “best rides” feature customized to your riding style and search history! Business could pay-to play, and insurance companies, motorcycle manufacturers, and tire sellers would love that personally identifiable riding data! (Please, don’t)
Their owners manual for their braking light bar lists Patent # 10,363,865, but I don't know if this applies 1 to 1.
A brake light that requires system administration?
(Performance cars sometimes have vacuum gauges to measure this. Aftermarket ones can be installed.)
A brake light could be rigged to activate past a certain a vacuum threshold. (There would be some false positives that are possibly not worth caring about.)
For all the engineering described in the article, I'm surprised it doesn't mention this possibility, if only to give reasons why it was discarded. (Maybe it's a bad solution; I have no ide!)
It seems that a vacuum-driven brake light could possibly have an advantage of kicking in faster than a motion detector, because it could trigger as soon as the revs are dropping with the throttle closed, before the clutch engages to actually connect the engine braking to the wheel.
I.e. blip-throttle before downshift -> vacuum kicking in / light comes on -> downshift completes, actual braking begins.
Otherwise, is it me or the info on the product page is a bit dry. No size specs, no instructions, not enough pics. It is like the last step to convert is not fully complete yet.
One of the issues usually is to make sure the part is compatible with the bike as otherwise you need to spend money to get it and then “try it”. The suggestion with tge pictures how to put it would be useful as well.
I thought: I could look at the data, but I see so many motorcyclists driving dangerously that the data wouldn't teach me much.
So then I thought: I bet if I look at the accident rate for women riders it would be interesting.
I found that in the UK, male riders have seven times the accident rate of female riders.
So I guess how you ride does make a huge difference.
Also, is this accidents total men / women? Then it would not even take into account, that there are significant more male riders.
Women also tend to ride smaller bikes, for obvious reasons.
Motorcyclists on average ride less than 3,000 miles a year, cars are 4-6x that. 90% of accidents are within 10 miles of the riders home.
Another interesting stat is that the majority of motorcycle crashes are single vehicle accidents, ie. the rider going down by themselves. While this can be equipment failure, in most cases this will be crashing due to riding too fast or above skill level.
So yes, riding very carefully at safe speeds and avoiding dangerous situations (I choose my routes to avoid situations where drivers are likely to be in their phone — mostly freeways and freeway-like streets in cities) will make bikes a lot more safe.
I knew someone at a previous company that was here one day then gone the next due to a non-highway accident caused by someone else IIRC.
It's sort of like being friends with someone who plays low-chance russian roulette for fun in their free time.
In 2019 I was a bicycling a lot, and really wanted to get something with a motor, so I could be a bit faster/farther/not so sweaty with my trips. I had access to a car but rarely used it.
I really don't like many inherent safety issues with motorcycles and never seriously considered obtaining one, but kept wanting a two-wheeled vehicle with a motor.
I'd ridden a 50cc scooter in 2019 for a few days, and it was fine then, but I never considered one seriously since.
Eventually, in 2020 it was an emergency room doctor who suggested I look at 'real scooters' instead of the 50cc things.
So I did, eventually I ended up owning a 170cc scooter/moped thing, and it feels infinitely safer than a motorcycle, and a bicycle. I've done 20,000 miles on scooters since then, probably, all over the world,
including Denver to Canada and back once.
Cheaper lighter more efficient, than motorcycles. more stable, lower center of mass, better wind protection, useful storage options, too, compared to motorcycles and bicycles.
I ride mine year round, no issues.
I wrote a page trying to capture some of the upsides, but it's hard to get the tone right on the internet:
Why make such a definitive claim with zero evidence to back it up?
The justifications in that section are nonsense and seem to boil down to a skill issue on your part.
Sure, around the city a scooter makes sense for a lot of people, though I believe they provide a false sense of security. The lower barrier to entry also lowers the "perceived" risk.
Feeling safer !== safer
Personally, I feel much safer on one of my motorcycles than a scooter. But that's because I am extremely comfortable on a motorcycle and can make it do exactly what I want, when I want.
I have 2 bikes, both stock exhaust, both quiet. The older one with the Euro 3 and larger engine is more quiet than the one that is Euro 5 and has a small engine, but none is loud enough to wake anyone at night if I come home at that time. At the same time, a couple of neighbors with fancy Akrapovic cans will wake up the entire street every time they pass by.
I pretty much live by this:
“If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you've already blown it.” ― Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
Lower the center of gravity, reduce the weight, increase the wind protection, make the riding stance really comfortable.
Make it easily accommodate a backpack, or a passenger, or both.
And you have a scooter!
They're unconventional in the greater usa, but wildly fun.
Generally, it seems like one can entertain the best parts of a bicycle, feet, and a car, and a motorcycle, all in one.
I wrote a bit of an ode to scooters, here: https://josh.works/scootering
I wish more of my friends rode scooters!
snarf21•12h ago
Instead of a motion sensor, why not simply turn on the brakes whenever you down shift and leave it on until the throttle is engaged?
bastawhiz•12h ago
Actually in thinking about it, if you had access (digitally) to the current gear, you probably also have tachometer and velocity data as well through whatever that connection is anyway.
On the other hand, a motion sensor works for all bikes and is quite robust.
scblock•12h ago
bastawhiz•10h ago
scblock•6h ago
HPsquared•12h ago
That's how gear indications work on most manual cars too: there's no actual sensor telling what gear is selected (other than reverse, and sometimes clutch pedal and neutral).
diggan•11h ago
Wouldn't that be highly variable based on the vehicle itself? Especially considering personal modifications tend to be common for motorbikes.
HPsquared•11h ago
echoangle•10h ago
> Especially considering personal modifications tend to be common for motorbikes.
Including gearbox? The only thing relevant for the functionality would be the transmission ratio for each gear.
HPsquared•4h ago
bastawhiz•10h ago
jollyllama•11h ago