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.)
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?
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
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".
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 :(
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.
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.
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).
Readit News
https://i.imgur.com/hpOt1ac.png
(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.)
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.
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
At least that's how my bicycle helmet light works.
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".
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.
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.
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).
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
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.
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?!
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.
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.
Dead Comment
It's unclear to me after reading both the GP and your comment.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect
Maybe randomization of vehicle lighting schemes, across vehicles and time-periods, would provide the most-enduring improvements.
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.)
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 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.
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.
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.
[1]: https://reesdistributors.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/V102...
There’s another reason: for fun and recreation - not necessarily for utility or to show off to others.
Cost and time was minimal.
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.
I just don't ride at night.
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.
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?
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.
It's really jarring, as someone who doesn't own a car.