Thanks! So the top light is on some big new 'eyestalk' above the handlebars?
(I'm baffled how the Rice PR team could put this out without any diagram/photo/rendering of the full proposed six-light-configuration, which could give the story 10x more interest & viral-forwarding legs, as well as improve the chances of its eventual life-saving adoption.)
My take is that this is about parallax [1], although I haven't read
the paper and so that's an assumption.
Creatures with forward facing stereoscopic vision (like us) can judge
the speed and distance of an object if we can determine its size and
see something of the background. In the dark, some information is
missing when we rely on attached lights.
Most people know the approximate size of a car, and so with two lights
its easier to guess the distance (and crucially speed as the distance
between the lights seems to change).
I've noticed it's harder to cross a road when bikes are approaching
than cars, because if you're looking along the axis of travel then its
hard to gauge their speed.
Attaching more than one light to a bike allows us to judge the speed
better. It seems that it's irrelevant whether the spacing is
horizontal or vertical for our visual systems to make this judgement.
This research, & further your comment, makes me wonder:
Customized cars often project vanity mood lighting down towards the pavement. (I believe the legality of such nonstandard lighting varies across jurisdictions.)
Perhaps motorcycles could be required to project a large light-splash down, creating a more-visible 'light puddle' below them. It could even be something with very-sharp boundaries, & a standard oval size, so that the shape more strongly communicates distance/angle/speed.
One issue is:
- Propensity of people to use "lasers" for this, see above link.
- Bikes with and without motors, lean to the side.
- People don't like lasers being flashed in their eyes.
But even motorbike foglights, turned almost vertically down at the road, would achieve something like this.
I just moved to the Netherlands where bikes are aplenty and saw one of these two nights ago. It was not so dramatic as the examples you linked but still very visible. I think this could be a good option for motorcycles.
I suspect this would harm the motorcyclist's night-vision in a way that a car driver is not affected due to the light reflecting off the ground and right back at them. Whereas the body of the car protects the driver from the glare.
Bicycle rider with a somewhat weak top-of-helmet mounted light (maybe 100 or 200 lumens): I have a tough time telling if it's on while riding if it's somewhat bright. Zero impact to view.
Can really help with retro-reflective signage, since I can point a light directly at the sign. But definitely not a blinding return.
I’ve never seen this in Australia. But my main gripe with motor/push bikes is a) People riding without any lights. b) People riding without sufficient lightly.
Re. b)If a bike comes up really close to the rear of your vehicle, and the rider has no reflective gear, the light can be obscured by your own vehicle.
Re. a) I’m not sure if this is some Aussie thing. Especially with push bikes. The number of people I’ve seen on the road at night with no lighting and zero reflective gear.
So as a relatively recent migrant to Aus, I find that odd because AFAICT the regulations here are more strict than back in the UK. I.E. you must wear a helmet, you must have lights after dark, your bike must have a certain configuration of reflectors (two in the wheel, back/front of each pedals, front and rear) etc.
From what I understand the reflector stuff is routinely ignored by 'the community' because it's outdated, rules out use of clipless setups etc.
But the lights ... no idea. It's really really bad idea to cycle on the road at night with no lights. I wouldn't want to risk it, and it's scary as a driver when all of a sudden there's this dark figure out of nowhere.
Yes, you're onto something. Ryan F9 has an amusing video that dives into the "pigeon issue" of mis-judging approach speed of oncoming traffic that results in one of the most common motorcycle accidents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doSDfIo61r0
That has long been my practical intuition. To put add an additional issue, at a glance, a motorcycle light at night just looks like a car that's far away. That's definitely not going to work out well.
Works great for getting a driver’s attention at a 4-way stop (the North American approach to right-of-way is deficient when everyone stops at the same time and is going straight).
But a problematic tell when I see a head-turner walking on the sidewalk.
Seriously! As a motorcyclist (and cyclist) with a keen interest in not dying, I'm always looking for additional ways to be seen and predictable. This image should have been in the blog article, full stop. How is it _so_ buried?
iirc most motorcycle safety coaches will advise that the horn is usually the last thing you should be thinking about in a dangerous situation. It's a great tool for proactively getting someone's attention, but in an emergency the motorcyclist should focus all of their energy on maneuvering to safety regardless of how the car behaves. Motorcycles are maneuverable enough that generally if you have time to honk you have time to be proactive about your own safety rather than rely on the driver hearing you.
If you're able to focus on both that's great but most riders fall back onto instinct and that instinct should be braking, accelerating, or turning rather than honking.
The coaches tell you that because they're (mostly) talking to new riders and as you say working the horn isn't going to make a material difference and is bottom priority and ultimately clutters the mind of a new rider trying to deal with the situation.
After say 5+ years of riding bikes the braking/accelerating/turning as you say is instinct and the conscious part of the mind has plenty of bandwidth left to honk the horn :)
Totally. 5 years of smart, conscious riding will definitely give you that bandwidth, but I've also met people who've been riding twenty years tell me they "had to lay 'er down" in an accident as if it was the result of a planned maneuver and not a fistful of front brake as they shat their pants. Imo it doesn't matter how long you've been riding if you don't make the effort to hone the right instincts for when shit hits the fan.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I used the horn on any of my motorcycles in two decades of riding (>100kmi, various situations, not much commute, less in the dark). In dangerous situation where honking might have helped, I typically was busy to either break or steer out of harms way. Aside that horns on m/c tend to be meek. They seem to be installed only because some law requires them.
I would if I could! Sometimes it's kind of funny - you see a few sets of ears poking out amongst the long grass of the road verge. A couple of beeps on the horn and suddenly a mob of wallabies emerges - and often hop straight across the road rather than back into the bush. That's the main use of the horn - to flush out the daft critters who may well otherwise jump straight into your path.
By the time you use your horn it's too late for the most common fatal multi-vehicle accidents, which are crossing traffic incidents. Most motorcycle saftey courses tell you not to bother with the horn until you have the incident under control because people don't react predictably or in time to horns.
amazing number of downvotes on 'horn' -- actually, as an urban rider, the horn is very useful. Plenty of comments here have to do with the freeway or during an event that has already started.. thats not the purpose of a horn. The horn is to tell others you are there before an accident starts, in a setting where they can hear you. Amazing antipathy for a safety statement here..
What? You honk your horn every time you enter an intersection where a driver is present and could cross your path? Because if they're already crossing your path then honking your horn is the last thing you should be concerned with.
Then maybe you should explain what you're actually doing because I'm an urban rider, my friends are urban riders, and the general consensus in our local motorcycling community is the horn is useless. Because like I said, if the driver isn't crossing your path then there's no reason to sound the alarm and if they're already entering/crossing your path then you'd better be engaged in crash avoidance. It's not clear when you're using your horn.
Loud horns don't overcome even louder sound systems and then there's the issue with deaf people (yeah, that's something that's happened to me before - why didn't they hear my horn? Oh, they were literally deaf!)
Most motorcycle crashes involving other vehicles are a result of drivers crossing the rider's path, e.g. making a left-hand turn in front of a rider who's going straight. Honking your horn in such a scenario can actually be a bad thing because most driver's response to hearing a horn is to stop. Now the driver is completely blocking the path and not moving. It's typically better to let the driver proceed and swerve to the left to avoid collision.
That's why most riders consider horns to be useless.
I was about to cruise through a yellow light today when a pickup truck in the center of a one way street abruptly decided to make a left turn across my path. (I was in the far left lane.) I slammed on my brakes and laid on my horn.
I saw his face in his mirror. As he realized the noise he was hearing was my underpowered Vespa horn protesting the needless near-calamity, a smirk of victory beamed across his face.
Guy nearly took me out today, and all I could do was trust my ABS brakes and give him Roadrunner's angriest "meep meep."
Now you've learned your lesson to not cruise through yellow lights. Also, mind your lane position. I'm always in the left-most position to maximize driver's opportunity to see me.
I think I get why this might be the most effective:
When I look at that, my mind completes it to a stick figure, like an optical illusion. At least to me, that one is immediately recognizable as a human.
Thanks - it was definitely hard to visualize with only the (oddly) un-illustrated article.
Without going all the way to version "E", I've noticed that a setup not pictured, with two full-sized headlights side-by-side in the normal just-under-the-handlebars location (round or rectangular didn't matter) instantly made it far easier to identify the motorcycle and judge distances. The single headlight just looks too much like a car with one dead headlight (especially since standard riding technique is to not ride in the center of the lane), and it takes seconds to figure out if I'm looking at a bike or a car possibly halfway into my lane. Two headlights it's instant, and also upgrades it to a 2D object in a black field, making 3D judgements much easier, as the spacing between them widens on approach, etc..
I think the best setup would be a dual-headlight setup in the illustrated "E" setup.
I add aux lights similar to the two bottom configuration. This creates a triangle with the headlight and makes me more visible.
The two lights to the side is excessive because it can confuse drivers with the turn signal lights.
I would not attach any lights to the helmet. Helmets are ideally glancing off impacts and gopro or light add ons can cause catastrophic failure for the helmet if its hit during impact. See Schumacher's ski accident
Honestly, first motorcycle helmet with inbuilt front and back cams that is at a vaguely mainstream price (premium allowed for extra features!) has my serious interest.
Helmets are tested in a variety of impact scenarios without modification. Who knows how some random attachment might negatively affect those outcomes. Presumably you might use some sort of adhesive to attach things — that adhesive can damage and weaken the shell of the helmet.
I just use my brain and assume that the plastic 'candy' shell on the helmet doesn't do anything (other than moisture protection) and as long as the styrofoam innards are in-tact, then nothing materially changes.
Otherwise we'd also see warnings against stickers and artwork on the shell of helmets, but we don't. Or at least I didn't, but I don't really read manuals.
Every motorcycle helmet manual I’ve read explicitly says not to put stickers on the helmet. Protecting the foam from moisture is important — a rainy ride can significantly weaken the foam. Eg: https://www.bellhelmets.com/on/demandware.static/-/Sites-bel...
Trick is to have the light held with some kind of rubber band type thingy, so that in an impact, it just breaks off sacrificially. But I guess, in the unlikely event, if the impact is at just the wrong angle, it just drives through the impact-absorber. But I don't think it's possible to fall straight down (negative Y speed, but no X/Z speed vector) when travelling at speed.
At least that's how my bicycle helmet light works.
The choice of the small top light seems odd. If the lower view of the bike is obstructed, like in a review/side mirror, you'll see a single small light, and think it's a far away something.
I think adding some unique color(s) or flashing patterns would be much more identifiable. We're in the future now. We can craft lights that have colors outside of efficient slices of the blackbody spectrum, and make them do fancy things like "blink".
However, the law does often distinguish between modulating/pulsating lights and flashing ones. In the US, federal code 49 CFR Part 571.108 S7.9.4.1 explicitly allows modulating headlights on motorcycles[1]. From time to time I do see motorcycles whose headlights pulse. I hate it - it makes them easier to see but harder to gauge distance, and harder to focus on all the other traffic and pedestrians on and around the road.
As a "normal" driver, the pulsating lights absolutely are annoying... and don't even get me started on those loud ass pipes!
Now, as a motorcyclist who has been hit head-on more than once by drivers who swore "I didn't even see him!" -- with the last crash leaving me with multiple broken bones and an inability to walk for several months -- you better believe I now have both a pulsating headlamp and a nice set of loud ass pipes (they're even called "Street Cannons")! on my bike.
I've also lost a non-zero number of friends due to folks who swore they didn't see them.
It's now been eight years since I've gotten hit... so I really am sorry if my headlight or pipes bother you as I pass by but, well, I have loved ones I'd like to see again so I hope you'll forgive me.
TIL Loud ass pipes for safety. I never understood how someone can rationalize themselves out of waking up a whole neighborhood at night for the sake of their own transportation.
I have pipes that are pretty loud above ~4000 RPM, but pretty quiet underneath that. When I'm in a residential neighborhood I keep the revs low and shift early (it's less aggressive anyway, which is what you want if a kid or a dog could dart out in front of you). On the freeway and when nobody is around me I also keep it under 4000 RPM. But when I start feeling boxed in or I'm lane splitting I'll drop it down a gear to bump the volume of the pipes. You can see people recognize you're there, and that's the goal.
But yeah, those guys who blare their exhaust on bikes or cars are a-holes.
I ride. 9 years on a second hand GSXR1000 with pipes already swapped - loud. Now 5 years on an MT-09 with standard pipes - normal. City daily commuting the whole time. I won't bother with loud pipes again.
My pet theory: Unlike motorcycle riders, car drivers don't get the benefits of stereo positioning unless you are real close.
By the time people hear it, decide to look for it, place the location, react as required - you are usually on your way anyway.
Mind you, my home park is beside the driveway between two apartment blocks. I don't want to piss off 50 people I live close to, each time I come and go.
I can pinpoint everyone in my 90s Nissan, I cannot do the same in modern cars. Sound deadening has ruined that type of spatial awareness. That is just from tire noise as most cars are pretty quiet too.
I do often hear loud bikes lane splitting in time to give them room though, food for thought!
Does that mean we’re stuck with white, yellow/amber, and red for the next 1000 years of human civilization? Laws are made for the needs of the society, not the other way around. As others have noted, there are already exceptions for motorcycles.
I guess I don't understand your comment, or why the current codes matter, if new data shows something like a trivial color change could save lives.
The purpose of pointing out the exception for motorcycles was that the laws have already been changed/ammended/whatever once. Surely it's possible that it happens again, say, with color.
... ask anyone with serious motorcycle miles and they'll tell you about the same thing.
When I was riding motorcycles as a daily driver, I modified my headlights to keep the low beams on when the high beams were on, simply for visibility - it gave me a "wide, multi-color front bar" (low beams were HID, high beams were upgraded incandescent, outer markers were yet different colored) that improved people seeing me. Another bike I did the same thing to, so both headlights were on normally to improve visibility.
I ride sidecar rigs now, which have a "wide, weird lighting" layout (central headlight on the bike, but a sidecar light too), and I'll ride those at night. But the one remaining two wheeler is just a single central headlight, and I won't ride it at night for exactly the reasons this study found - you can't tell distance/speed/etc from a single headlight without any other context.
Serious rider here. Riding is my primary transportation.
I used to ride at night much more often years ago, but I've basically modified my lifestyle to the point of just avoiding riding at night at all regardless of lighting situation. After enough close calls with drivers who just don't pay attention, not to mention in the city I live in drunk driving as well as aggressive driving is sadly very common.
To be honest I even feel less comfortable driving at night even in a car, for the rare time I drive my girlfriends car after enough years of just avoiding night driving.
When I took the MSF (Motorcycle Safety Foundation) basic rider course, they had everyone turn on the extra headlight by default, with that exact explanation.
Just a comment on the "27 times more likely to die" figure. I haven't followed up the stats quoted, but the equivalent in my country (where I have read up in some detail) generally quoted is 40x. This drops dramatically when you cut out those who are unlicensed (bearing in mind this is illegal here), drunk, or in their 1st year of riding.
Which is not to say that motorcycling isn't far more dangerous than driving a car. Bikes are my sole source of transport, on poor potholed rural windy roads in an area with truly terrible standards of driving, and I'm extremely aware of the dangers every day. But the figures are hugely elevated by a few factors, all of which are trivial to eliminate (for an individual, less so for society at large).
> This drops dramatically when you cut out those who are unlicensed (bearing in mind this is illegal here), drunk, or in their 1st year of riding.
That's misleading. You can't cut those out and not also cut them out for car drivers. ~30% of US car crash fatalities involve drunk drivers, which is roughly the same as the motorcycle rate
Depends whether you're applying the multiplier to the population fatality rate vs your individual chance. It was the former that I was thinking of, but either is possible.
On your specific claim, I don't know about US statistics, but when I looked in Aus (about 5 years ago), the proportion of deaths involving drunk/inexperience/unlicensed riders was much greater than for drivers. Individual choices and skill had a much bigger effect for motorcyclists.
Nonetheless I'm not remotely claiming that death rates are not greatly higher than for drivers. They absolutely are, in all categories. But the headline multiplier may not apply to any given individual.
This is purely anecdotal, but it feels much easier to stay safe in a car than it does on a bike. Crashing on a bike is inherently super dangerous regardless of speeds, whereas crashing in a car is only really dangerous at high speeds (and even then crumple zones are really really effective). The lack of a crumple zone for motorcycles makes it really hard to not judge them as more dangerous.
Put this way, to my judgement a skilled driver should be much safer than an equally skilled motorcycle rider.
Equally anecdotal is that it feels much easier to avoid crashes on a bike. They're nimbler and have access to much more road (and off it, for that matter). Yes, very obviously if you do crash, you're much worse off on the bike.
In the end though, you're right, and we don't even need anecdotes to prove it - the stats are voluminous and clear. Yes, you can reduce your risk somewhat with good bike and skills maintenance, but even with that, motorcycling is much more risky to life and limb than driving a car. If safety is higher in your valuation than whatever your reasons for riding (there are many possible), riding is never rational. Safety is fairly low in my evaluative framework, and my reasons for riding persuasive, so it's not a hard choice in my personal case.
It's not misleading. First off, 75% of all motorcycle crashes are single vehicle crashes - i.e. rider error, usually going wide in a corner.
50% of all motorcycle crashes involve the rider having a blood alcohol level above the legal limit.
A high percentage (not sure the exact number) are inexperienced riders who've been riding less than six months.
Another 50% of motorcycle crashes occur at night.
Obviously there's a lot of overlap in these statistics but by and large if you ride sober, learn how to negotiate corners, and don't ride late at night when the drunk drivers are on the road then your chances of being involved in an accident plummet.
Unfortunately, drunk riding is a thing. Where I live there are lots of planned rides, even charity rides, that ride from bar to bar. Group riding is already more dangerous than riding single and now let's add alcohol to the group! What could possibly go wrong?!
Wouldn't surprise me if equipment failures of even well maintained vehicles can get you to 10x. Just random failure on a motorcycle and you go splat.
I was riding during daytime, with many years experience, safely while going in a precisely straight line and not changing speed. Nice, 90% tires with rain tolerant tread and perfectly maintained vehicle. All drivers around me driving safely, me driving safely, rainy but good conditions. Hit a slippery patch on the road, that was somehow angled such that my rear tire slipped at an angle and I was almost instantaneously thrown high-side from the bike, at 70mph from an interstate.
Full body suit, helmet, gloves. I walked away without even a scratch (I still can't believe how). But almost died; only survived by the fact I was thrown towards the curb instead of towards the fast lane of traffic.
I'd been in lots of crashes before, but usually because I did dumb shit. This time really shocked my conscious because there was just no explanation, no bad drivers, no bad vehicles, no dumb shit, nothing remarkably bad with the road, nothing I can assign fault to anyone or anything. It was a solid week before I got back on the bike after that; usually after a crash I'm back on within minutes if it's still rideable. Impossible to prevent, and no way something like that can happen in a car.
Fellow rider, that's terrifying. I'm trying to even imagine what could happen. I guess at an angle means your rear wheel was coming around, slipping? Maybe the slickness and even your "maintaining speed" amount of throttle was enough to get the rear wheel spinning. That's just especially scary for me, because I really like the--illusion?--that I'm in control. I want a say-so in what happens, especially in risky situations.
I've totaled out a bike myself and gotten back on, but more and more I think maybe it's time to give it up. Especially because I think there's a non-zero (but small) chance we solve aging/death in my lifetime.
I'm thinking something like half the tread hit slippery surface, and the other half didn't, torqueing the rear wheel in one direction and throwing it to the side. The throttle to maintain speed as you say must have been enough to throw it. Happened very quickly, and as soon as the slick patch went away and the wheel gained purchase I was thrown off the bike as obviously there was misalignment between front and back wheel and the momentum of forward motion.
I don't think something like that can happen on an typical uniform slippery surface. I rode motorcycles exclusively for some time in seattle (rain capital of the US) and never had that happen. Rode motorcycles year round off and on for ~10 years before this happened, it was a freak occurrence. I think it requires a particularly nasty freak occurrence of the shape of a wet patch and the angle and entry point at which you hit it.
Unless you have a rear tyre profile like that of a regular car tyre this is very unlikely. (People who ride long distances on the highway do use car tyres) The contact patch width is TINY.
Well it took me a good 10 years with most of that exclusively on motorcycle before I crashed like that in the rain. I do agree it's unlikely, almost a freak accident to have that happen while going in a straight line at constant speed on good terrain. I truly have no good explanation.
I am no expert but if the whole contact patch hit something slick (oil patch from someone leaking in stop and go traffic) the tyre would first lose grip then immediately gain traction. This is like the definition of a high side anyway. Though I am not sure how rain effects things.
It's about 40 to 50% on any given year. Fatal accidents very often involve alcohol and speeding and only a single vehicle. When it's not alcohol, it's usually youth, and as you point out that's reflected as the general inexperience of any driver with a new vehicle type.
40 to 50% of all fatalities involve the circumstances I've described. The last year I checked was about 36k fatalities, and a little more than 16k of them matched that pattern.
Another confounding, but obvious point, is that alcohol and risky driving is also more of a factor at night than it is during the day. People also might assume that a motorcycle rider is _less_ likely to commit a DUI, when it's actually the opposite.
Once you take risky single vehicle accidents out of the picture, the statistic that really starts to stand out is pedestrians. They go from 16% of all deaths to around 30% of the remaining deaths. These are also most likely to happen at night, and a surprising number happen outside of urban areas; and it wasn't clear from NHTSA data alone whether that was due to speed of the vehicle being higher or the distance to a hospital being greater.
One odd point that I didn't have time to chase down is it seems that elderly drivers and passengers are much safer in the front seat. There was a strong skew for their fatalities to be found in the rear seats of vehicles. The profile was something like 80 year olds in the rear, and 40 year olds in the front. This seemed like a particularly dangerous configuration for elderly passengers.
The other interesting data point I gathered is that Texas had a higher number of fatalities over California, even though it has a smaller population. It suggests that state laws and road design are also a large factor in fatalities.
Anyways.. NHTSA publishes the FARS database. Every fatality is recorded, and if it was investigated all of the data is reported in a standardized format. They even have a "sequence of events leading up to the fatality" coded in there. It's an amazing resource.
I believe that the apparent benefits to traffic safety from various lighting schemes share an underlying reason: producing uncertainty in other drivers, and thus more delay or caution before maneuvering. Daytime headlights for motorcycles (standard in the US since the 1970s, or so), daytime running lights
(standard in Canada, now common in the US), helmet-mounted headlamps for bicyclists - all tend to produce a reaction of "Wait, what is that?" in drivers.
That was the same impression I got when I saw the light patterns pictured in the article. I had to slow down a second to "figure out" what I was looking at.
The study claims that "improved lighting could result in other motorists being able to see motorcycles up to 0.8 seconds sooner."
Even this might be related to the fact that you are seeing something new and strange. If something "surprising" happens when I'm driving, my attention is instantly snapped to it, and my foot is at least on the brake pedal, if not actively braking.
With that in mind, I wonder if the benefit from a new lighting design might fade over time as the novelty wore off.
Yea, I remember in some intro engineering course at brown they went over a study that over time, mandating more/new lighting eventually had a null or opposite effect - because drivers get used to them. Meanwhile energy, light pollution, and driver fatigue goes up. They don't seem to address this at all.
Indeed - similar to how narrower streets & traffic circles can reduce accidents by demanding more driver attention.
Perhaps, even next-generation lighting could be dynamic, brightening or otherwise modulating when on-vehicle sensors detect other vehicles nearing. (That could be either be nearer generally, or when sensors detect heightening risk.)
Yes, this is also why it makes sense to ride with a bit of side to side motion within the lane. Car drivers see it as somewhat erratic and start to pay attention. They often think you're being showy or maybe even drunk, but they notice, and that is what matters.
I feel like a lot of people who ride motorcycles care more about headlight aesthetics than headlight safety (myself included). I don't really see "other people react to my presence" as a particularly good strategy for staying alive on a motorcycle. The best way to not die is to assume everyone is doing their best to kill you in a stupid way all of the time. TBQH I've had more close calls when people saw me and reacted in an unpredictable way than because someone didn't see me, but that's just my anecdata. (and most of my memorable close calls were on a pedal bike, so only sorta related, but still feels applicable)
I'm not saying that having better headlights doesn't matter, I just don't think it matters a lot compared to all the other risks involved in riding a motorcycle. I'd be surprised if the set of "accidents that would have been prevented if someone was able to detect you 1 second earlier from head on" was particularly big.
I'm a rider myself, I rarely have close calls and I chop it up to basically the same anecdotal data. But at least for the US where I live and the standards for getting a license seem to be much worse than many other parts of the world I've visited/heard of, I'd wager a decent part of it is simply rider skill.
I know way too many riders who never practice, can barely pull a U-turn from a stop, don't know how to use their front brake effectively, and vastly overestimate their abilities. And then if a car even dares to accidentally not see them because they sat in their blind spot they flip a shit. I know riders who are very good, but unfortunately in the place I live I know many many more who are just not very good and ride very unaware of everything around them. And unlike driving a car, there is a different skill floor/ceiling to be considered competent.
> And then if a car even dares to accidentally not see them because they sat in their blind spot they flip a shit
Oh god, that is the most annoying complaint I ever hear. Such a common post on any moto-focused discussion site. Usually involves an idiot on a bike cruising next to a car and then overreacting when the car begins to merge into their lane. Happens all the fucking time if you've ridden for longer than a day. Get over it and get better at anticipating it.
Two rules of riding that have kept me safe for a couple hundred thousand miles of riding:
1. Always assume the cars next to you will merge into your lane.
2. ABP, Always Be Passing. Going at the flow of traffic is dangerous. Going slower than traffic is even more dangerous.
ABP, Always Be Passing. This cannot be overstated, it's a lot easier to deal with problems in your field of vision than ones rapidly approaching from behind. That's also why filtering is so important, and it's heinous that it's not allowed in some (most?) states. If you're able to filter you can use your superior acceleration to always be ahead of cars.
It's true of bikes too, that's why treating red lights as stop signs on a bicycle is something that needs wider legal adoption. I often do it anyway and it means that in city traffic I am sometimes able to traverse a block without ever being passed by a car.
Sorry I didn't realise this existed, does it mean that as a cyclist you can ride through a red light permitted there is no traffic and you first come to a complete stop?
> Rider education and constantly practicing is key. It also helps you enjoy motorcycling more too.
I don't think many non-motorcyclists get this aspect of riding, ie. that the activity itself is one to be honed and reflected on, and that treating it this way makes the mere act of transporting yourself from one place to another (which is essentially dead time for many car drivers) a keen and vital part of life.
That's an interesting thought: the less you ride the worse you are, so you absolutely have to ride often to maintain your safety profile. I imagine one of the least safe things might be an experienced rider not being able to ride for a while, and not taking that into account. I'm less angry at my neighbors with loud bikes riding all the time, thanks to your comment, because at least they are staying safer than if they just did it once a month or something (and I do like my neighbors, aside from 5am VROOM-VROOM noises).
This is definitely the case. I don't trust myself when I've had a few weeks off the bike until I've done some proper practise again. The biggest obvious drop-off is attention - mind-wandering is verboten when riding, and creeps back if you're not used to maintaining concentration. Specific skills like front-brake control also need maintenance, and can always improve, whatever the experience level, as they're pretty subtle. A fortiori for reading the road and driver behaviour.
> I'm less angry at my neighbors with loud bikes riding all the time
Well that's pleasantly tolerant. The consideration should work both ways, but the nature of some of the motorcyclist population doesn't always lend itself that way unfortunately.
This is what I like about commuting by motorbike, even in a city. You are forced to stop thinking about work on the way home. You have to be present and mindful.
A version of meditation or mindfulness in a sense.
Riding a lot absolutely helps get better, but there is also such a thing as deliberate practice for uncommon situations. Riding 100000 miles straight is very different from riding 10000 miles in twisty turns, around sharp corners, practicing your emergency-braking, etc. Even if its just 5 minutes or so doing these a week, it makes you a vastly better rider.
Every time I have to take extended time away from riding for some reason, I always immediately start off with a parking lot session of riding around, getting back into the groove. It doesn't take very long for it all to come back with just a bit of deliberate practice.
But there are what we call weekend warriors, and many, especially in the US store away their bike for half the year as well. There are many riders who barely put more than even a couple thousand miles a year on their bikes. And these are some of the most dangerous riders to be around, especially if they have an ego.
> a lot of people who ride motorcycles care more about [...] aesthetics than [...] safety
true, I ride with a traffic vest[1] on (which hides my expensive leather jacket!) and I'm probably deducted 40% in coolness points, but i figure I'm able to compound the little coolness points I get over a longer period. I wouldn't have done it in my 20s but now I am in my 30s and have kids so safety is more important.
I've definitely noticed more people rotate their head to look at me since I've started wearing it.
People choose their vehicles for both functional purposes and sociocultural purposes. In somewhere like Manilla, a motorcycle has net positive functional utility since it is cheap, can park easily, and cut through traffic. In somewhere like Houston (where the study was authored), a motorcycle has net negative functional utility, given the humidity, rain, ample parking, and lack of lane splitting. That means riding is done for sociocultural purposes: to signal who you are by how you move about. For someone who is riding mainly for this reason, will they adopt a new light pattern, especially if it means adding a lamp to their head?
For the non-riders, ATGATT means "All The Gear, All The Time". I wince whenever I see some young kid and his girlfriend riding with t-shirt, short pants, and sandals. Human erasers on donor cycles :(
I think the gearless rider by age curve is mostly a bell. Those I see riding in full gear are either young or old (55+ if I had to guess) but not usually in the middle. It's obviously biased but I'm 31 and everyone I knew and know always ride in full gear.
I agree. I know many riders who say they only started wearing gear because they had kids, so this would align with a bell curve as they decide not to anymore once their kids are grown/independent.
I'm 30 with no plans for kids, and have always worn all my gear since the beginning. What some people don't realize is if you don't wear gear and you get hit even completely accidentally or its the riders fault, your chances of dying and causing emotional damage to not only those you love, but the other party in the accident are just not worth it. I.E. giving another driver PTSD for the rest of their life because they feel like they killed someone even in the situation it wasn't their fault.
This is known in the motorcycle community for decades. There is even a "get horizontal" mantra. The idea is that the wider you look (via light placement), the more likely drivers will notice you. One of the reasons is that the human brain perceives smaller (narrower) objects as less dangerous and is more likely to ignore them. But it is good to see research backing this up.
When I lived in the city and cycled a lot, I had led strips on the forms and handlebars and red ones on the rear stays. Because it's my understanding too that it's important to project a shape.
As the article points out single headlights are extremely hard to gauge the speed/distance of at night. I believe turning in front of a motorcycle having misjudged its distance/speed is one of the leading causes of deadly accidents, so improvements to lighting that help solve this would be huge.
Yes, left turning cars are my primary fear as a rider. Of course the problem arises during the day too, not just at night.
It'd be nice if the OP's research had compared alternative forms of lighting to 'surprise' the oncoming driver, like flickering lights. This works well to draw attention both day and night (using less flicker). Given the continuing problem of drivers not seeing bikes, it's a shame it hasn't been adopted as the new norm for all bikes (and bicycle lights) -- both front and rear.
It may be a contributing factor to recent cases where Tesla Autopilot rear ended motorcycles at night. Thus video has a visualization: https://youtu.be/yRdzIs4FJJg
One of these crashes was right by my home, where I rode to work nearly every day prepandemic.
Is that an honest question? How misinterpreting something as being further away than it actually is while on a road is 'an actual problem'? Of course it's 'less safe'.
Yes, my question was honest. When I asked it, I did not see "further away" in the text of the post. Possibly it was added or else I misread it.
As a motorcyclist, at night, I wish I had the appearance of a car in other motorists' fields of view!
But if it means misjudging my proximity, sure, I do not want that. Still, I think a single point of light (common motorcycle config) gives even less depth information than a pair or triplet of horizontal lights. I've run two or three lights wide on most of my bikes for decades. ATGATT and fingers crossed...
I have a single headlight on my motorcycle. I'm aware that adding more headlights will make me more visible at night, but adding two additional headlights will cost me $500 in parts alone. That's 1/12 the entire cost of what I paid for my bike.
Yep, no more riding at night for me either. It's too dangerous. As I've aged I've noticed how much harder it is for ME to see driving in a car at night. And now I'm CONSTANTLY blinded by these LED nuclear bomb headlights these huge ass trucks have now. It just sucks.
Mentioned in another comment but I rode at night when I was younger, but where I live there's just way too many drunk/aggressive drivers which is much worse at night, regardless of lighting situation. So I just don't ride at night.
There is no way that it should cost you $500 to add two additional LED headlights off the forks. Any random motorcycle parts store should have stuff that works fine, just wire it into your headlight circuit - there's usually a spare amp or so there.
I've tried they cheap lights and they suck. Poor beam patterns and have a habit of failing at inopportune times. (Ever had to race the sunset with a failed light?)
$500 is about in line for a reputable kit that can hold up to the elements.
Cyclist, motorist, biker and pedestrian here. I’m not sure what kind of motorcycle you have at your locale, here the mandatory running lights are alone quite visible. When I go by bike I have a Garmin Varia (sorry for the ad) which is quite powerful and also start blinking crazily when something arrives from behind.
We live in a world that has accepted road casualties. What to reduce them? Make people accountable for that, eg. lifetime driving license revocation.
I can’t believe we are talking about going around like a Christmas tree to increase survival probability. Are people driving? Then let’s make sure they are looking at where they are going.
Next time what? Will you mandate LEDs fitted jackets to pedestrians?
> Make people accountable for that, eg. lifetime driving license revocation.
Kind of like prohibition - it doesn't work. You may already note that people are caught daily without a license anyway.
Where I live at least, if you don't drive like a dick, chances are you could drive for years without being caught. I can't recall the last time I had to show my license at a police stop.
Most road safety problems boil down to too many cars. The US & Canada aren't interested in changing that though. In the US we have 40k road deaths/year baked into the culture.
It's really jarring, as someone who doesn't own a car.
I am quite happy with the yellow indicators. I had the opportunity to drive in the US and found quite awkward those integrated red indicators (compared to other restrictive/protective laws like edible toys).
Adventure motorcycle riders have been adding auxiliary lightning kits for a long time, for example, this BMW R1250: https://imgur.com/a/H0nYGIx.
The point being, according to studies, is that drivers gave auxiliary lighting equipped motorcycles a greater margin before pulling out on them. There are other studies which indicate that cars pull out on bikes as the driver perceives the motorcycle as a small thing, ergo it is far away and also less of a threat. A big triangle of three lights is much more dominant, it features in the view of the driver and is less likely to be ignored in a "micro glance".
I wish Motorcycles would emit some "noise" in the radio spectrum that says "Motorcycle over here!". My car gets the signal and does ... something with it. (Kids' shoes, too.) Not a perfect solution, but better than what we have now.
The problem is that a whole lot of people are driving who shouldn't be (distracted or otherwise), along with wide swathes of "culture" having decided that the road belongs to them and their needs only instead of to everyone on the road. Every little bit helps, I guess, but making us more visible isn't really the issue. Just observe how people around you drive when you aren't operating a motorcycle.
This may differ by locale, but this is (or, can be) an extension of motorcycles being relatively rare. In my normal driving, I see about 3 a week and usually not even having to negotiate the road with them. They're just passing by or present in some other lane doing some other thing that requires little action from me. From that perspective, it's unusual/rare that I find myself negotiating a lane change around a motorcycle or turning in front of. Again, further expand that to when I do find myself in a situation where it's dark and I'm turning and I see a light - it's usually my 3rd/4th/5th thought of "what is that?" before I realize it; even when completely undistracted. I usually act defensively and pause to give my brain a moment to catch up rather than pulling out in front of something I haven't recognized yet but this level of attention and behavior is very easy to lapse even by the best intentioned drivers. It's not a great approach to expect everyone else to be a perfect driver at all times.
There are differences in awareness between drivers though. When I drive a car, I (quite literally) ask myself whether there's a motorcyclist around at every junction or right turn (in a LH drive country) I come to. My conditions are pretty unusual - I'm primarily a motorcyclist and rarely drive (to the point where I find myself nodding involuntarily at riders even when I'm driving). I'm not sanguine about raising people's average level of awareness - of motoryclists, or anything else! So I agree you wouldn't choose it as a road safety strategy. I'd still keep antenna up for anything that might amplify awareness though.
Yeah but it doesn't say the cause is biker visibility. I'd guess bikers themselves are far more likely to miss some pothole (or other reason) at night time and fataly crash.
As a rider, I try to pay particular attention to how I perceive motorcycles when I'm driving a car. At night, anything other than two headlights moving like a car is confusing to me. I often mistake parked cars for motorcycles when one of their headlights is occluded by something. Even when I'm sure I'm looking at a motorcycle, it's extremely difficult to tell how far away it is and how fast it's going without that second headlight positioned a relatively standard distance apart.
I've concluded that headlights, or perhaps any "point" lights, are insufficient. I figure the best solution would be to light up the whole bike with LED underglow or something, so there's no mistaking what your looking at. Unfortunately that's illegal in my state. For now I've settled for a host of reflective decals, but I might go for green lights and risk a ticket instead of my life (as much).
Tangential to this is that there has been some discussion that the recent Tesla/motorcycle fatalities are related to the fact the the struck motorcycles happened to be cruiser style with twin rear lights.
The Tesla system, which is optical only, saw the two lights as a far away car rather than a close up motorcycle.
I can't stand those. Even riding a motorcycle, they're a confusing and hard to make sense of rear light layout. Put a central light on the bike, preferably LED, and ideally that strobes a few times when you hit the brakes. It makes a very real difference in traffic - I did that, at separate times, to some different bikes, and was able to observe the difference. It mostly solved tailgaters. From annoyance or what, I don't care, but a bright, "flashes several times when the brakes are applied" tail light improves much on a motorcycle.
Not the worst thing I've seen, though. I came up behind one motorcycle at night, slammed cruiser style, that only had a dim red row of LEDs on the license plate holder, which was bolted to the rear wheel axle. I was on a motorcycle and couldn't tell what it was in front of me until I was probably 50' behind. Rider and passenger in flat black, of course.
But Harley's been shipping those dumb twin light rear configurations for a decade now. They're not novel, and it's just one more example in "Self driving car AIs don't understand the world and fail in entirely non-human ways."
I'm afraid the flashing brake light will fall victim to tragedy of the commons. It's a great idea, but when everyone has it, it just becomes a sea of blinking lights and harder to differentiate. I already hate being behind one vehicle that has it, because it's distracting and I'm interpreting the first time it dims as they're letting off the brake. It's also probably illegal if the law says brake light must be illuminated when the brake pedal is pressed.
I simply refuse to consider riding a Harley because they so obviously don't give a shit about rider safety and are behind on every piece of tech you could imagine that is standard with most other manufacturers. Sorry, I don't give a shit about the "being a badass" hog lifestyle and this contributes to why they're a dying brand.
They're really big in Australia, despite their expense and IMO objective inferiority to many other bikes. It's a combination of image and I think a certain cultural nostalgia, mostly among men in their 50s and above. I do kind of understand it as a reaction to the physical and cultural blandness and mediocrity of the very suburban Australia most of these guys inhabit.
Not a motorcyclist and so I have little direct knowledge on this:
Has anyone considered projecting lights from the bike on to the street in order to increase visibility? Something like this product (or at least the image of it):
I am imagining a car-shaped rectangle that projects from the motorcycle on to the road. Maybe it could flash and play a loud siren when another vehicle drives into the lighted space.
Off topic, I was about to comment on the statement "Night driving is especially dangerous, accounting for nearly half of all fatal crashes." And say something along the lines of how can it be especially dangerous if less than half is at night etc. But this being hacker news made me think a fraction deeper about any possible responses and realise that most journeys would be by day. Thank you hacker news for making me a little more thorough.
New car lighting would probably help also. One of the problems of the single motorcycle light is that you instinctively think "where's the other one?" — they look like half a car.
If cars had lighting that connected the two front and two rear lights, then 'looking for a pair of lights' would be less of an issue. I would like to see LED strips (not too bright) on the front and backs of cars.
I think the idea might be just to replace a single point source headlight.
In any kind of built-up area, point sources are everywhere. Add parallax into the mix, and any slowly-shifting point source is going to be ignored as background noise. But get multiple lights moving in synchrony, and that will get a driver's attention.
I have my doubts. It's not like we haven't added more lights to motorcycles before. The problem is it confuses drivers into believing the motorcycle is another type of vehicle and is much further away than it actually is. That's why motorcycle manufacturers went back to the single, large headlamp.
Is this like when they planned to have a brake light that flashed faster the harder you braked, but they didn't account for the Hawthorne Effect and people just noticed more lights cause they were new so they just added a third tail light for cheap?
Maybe the cars would see them if they were following speed limits, but of course let's blame driver who crossed the path of motorbike which was going only 50-100kmh over speed limit as it's standard at motorbike accidents with cars.
And I rode motorbike across multiple developing countries, not in luxurious enviroment of safe western roads, so maybe next time restrain from dumb assumptions.
It's not half a second in the context of minute-long trip, but rather in the context of driver reaction time which is (IIRC) around a couple of seconds. So, it's substantial.
It's very rare for me to see a heavy motorcycle on the road and them not be driving recklessly - speeding, following too closely, or even overtaking between two vehicles travelling in opposite directions.
I'm not saying car drivers never do this. I'm saying almost every time I encounter a motorcyclist they're driving dangerously. To the point where if I see one who doesn't tailgate me, I'm surprised.
Well-known roads (often 'twisties') attract riders who want to hoon around. In countries with lax licensing standards, there can be hundreds of testorerone-addled teens riding motorcycles they have no idea how to handle, and (like so many young males) little concern for anyone outside their circle. Not remotely representative of motorcyclists as a whole (in fact it's an ageing demographic).
That is a very biased sample. Also, my comment was primarily about incidents where another vehicle, typically a car, collides with a motorcycle due to the driver failing to notice the motorcycle. I don't think the factors you're describing here are major drivers of these kinds of collisions.
I'd very much rather they do that than behave the same way in a tesla or ford ranger or electric suv.
A 250kg motorcycle+rider can kill people in a hatchback or pedestrians, but a 2-4t car or suv definitely will. Plus the motorcycle idiots have a much higher proportion of single vehicle crashes.
This is sadly getting downvoted out of fear and callousness. Drivers cannot, will not, refuse to the very core of their being, accept that they are in control of a multi-ton metal battering ram, which is orders of magnitude more deadly and destructive than a motorcycle.
Rather than accept that with claiming this control comes on enormous responsibility, drivers will rather point blame anywhere else.
The only solution to the problem of drivers killing and maiming people, is having an environment where there is less need for driving, or an environment (physical and judicial) that enforces slow and safe driving.
Honestly if all riders rode like other cars do there would be less of an issue. Motorcycles have a disadvantage in visibility for sure, but that coupled with many riders riding/accelerating much faster than cars and weaving through traffic with much closer tolerances is a bad mix.
If you see cars driving like many motorcyclists do, most people are extremely annoyed.
Add being on the phone and fidgeting with the car touchscreen as distractions that cause accidents. There's an arms race going on where drivers buy bigger and bigger cars(SUVs) to get additional perceived safety from everyone else.
Probably true, but it's not going to happen without a huge amount of additional surveillance. I'm a daily rider and in all honesty I ignore speed limits when I'm away from habitation. Nothing crazy, but definitely illegal. For the most part I'm pretty responsible, and keep to well within limits around where people live. But there's no denying that speed is part of the appeal - I whizz past all cars (because I prefer to be away from them), zip around bendy country roads (because it's fun). I don't even have a fast bike, and I find it hard to stay within limits. I'm in my 50's and have only had one accident - an off-road mud-slip in the middle of nowhere resulting in a broken ankle .. and a long walk.
Want to save lives? High speed motorcycling should simply be illegal.
Low speed two wheel transportation should be limited to 25mph of power assistance and primarily take place in physically separated infrastructure (e.g. bike lanes in The Netherlands).
Any widespread mass usage of motorcycles and motor scooters (e.g. Vietnam) is a failure in city planning. Almost everyone on a scooter in a congested street should be on a train, bus rapid transit, or subway instead.
> Want to save lives? High speed motorcycling should simply be illegal.
Just make that; high speed _cars_ should simply be illegal. It is drivers killing motorcyclists, not motorcyclists killing drivers. Because cars are both heavy and fast, they are deadly by their very nature. With more power comes more responsibility. For drivers, this responsibility must translate to slowing down.
> Want to save lives? High speed motorcycling should simply be illegal.
I have often thought that if it didn't already exist, motorcycling would not be allowed.
Bureaucrat:"I'm having a hard time allowing cars with a low safety rating and you want WHAT?!?"
However, I am also not sure humanity should live their lives purely on a "save lives" basis. Scuba diving, sky diving, rock climbing, skiing, surfing, scootering, bicycles would ALL come under attack.
Life involves risk. However, I am always open to debate on how society should manage this risk.
Many are not so loud. The issue being confirmation bias in noticing them.
Sure, the activities listed are different. But they were not meant to be exhaustive either. Merely to demonstrate that "save lives" is not the one true rule for decision making.
As you allude to in your first sentence, it is about risk management.
Managing little risks (will loud bikes upset someone?) and big risks (will people die doing this?). The issue with risk management is everyone has their own perspective on it.
So then the question comes as to what the balance is for society.
I'd argue that "affecting others" is car accidents more than motorcycle noise.
Mind you, I'd be happy with more policing around loud bikes AND cars.
Let’s be real, the vast majority of motorcycles are loud nuisances and it’s the most dangerous mode of transportation, statistically less safe than plain cycling despite how often cyclists are endangered by cars.
“Many are not so loud” is kind of like saying “Not all mac and cheese is unhealthy.”
If the issue with risk management being that everyone has their own perspective on it…well, that was my perspective on it.
I think life would be better for most people if motorcycles were banned.
I don’t think the same thing about scuba diving or rock climbing because those activities don’t affect the rest of the general public in the same way that transportation infrastructure and common ambient noise does.
https://i.imgur.com/hpOt1ac.png