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New motorcycle lighting design could save lives

• diziet 4y ago
  Paper appears available here via "Open PDF in Browser" link: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4084982 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4084982
• Markoff 4y ago
  > New motorcycle lighting design could save MOTORCYCLISTS lives Or they could just drive safely. Also more lights = more visible = safer, wow, would have never expected that... I wonder how much cost this research and who paid for it.
  • Ptchd 4y ago
    Apparently you never rode a motorcycle... Its very common for cars to not see you coming.
    • Markoff 4y ago
      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.
      • Ptchd 4y ago
• alonmower 4y ago
  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.
  • kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    Dual lights also present the problem that they can be misinterpreted as a car further away.
    • emptybits 4y ago
      How would such a misinterpretation be an actual problem? Less safe?
      • dharmab 4y ago
        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 https://youtu.be/yRdzIs4FJJg One of these crashes was right by my home, where I rode to work nearly every day prepandemic.
      • OJFord 4y ago
        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'.
        • emptybits 4y ago
          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...
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  • randcraw 4y ago
• bsimpson 4y ago
  The six light configuration they're recommending is pattern E here: https://i.imgur.com/hpOt1ac.png https://i.imgur.com/hpOt1ac.png
  • gojomo 4y ago
    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.)
    • mattficke 4y ago
      The top light is a helmet-mounted light. They mention this in the full paper but it’s not clear from the abstract.
      • Scoundreller 4y ago
        I have one of these on my bicycle helmet. 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.
      • nonrandomstring 4y ago
        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. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax
• dmckeon 4y ago
  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.
  • gojomo 4y ago
    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.)
  • enriquec 4y ago
    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.
  • dustyleary 4y ago
    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.
    • gojomo 4y ago
      At least some of the benefit being an expiring 'novelty effect' seems plausible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect Maybe randomization of vehicle lighting schemes, across vehicles and time-periods, would provide the most-enduring improvements.
• ergonaught 4y ago
  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.
  • conductr 4y ago
    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.
    • aussiesnack 4y ago
      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.
• pgt 4y ago
  “Night driving is especially dangerous, accounting for nearly half of all fatal crashes.” Nearly half?
  • 23skidoo 4y ago
    It reads funny, but fewer people drive at night and still make up about half of accidents.
    • bismuthcrystal 4y ago
      So why not write something like "accidents happen at a higher rate a night"?
      • OJFord 4y ago
        or "nearly half despite ..."
    • dzhiurgis 4y ago
      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.
• JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Seems like half the science. How much safer does it make it, to be seen half a second quicker?
  • VTimofeenko 4y ago
    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.
  • nix23 4y ago
    Important if you have to deliver pizza, on the other hand who cares...if there are no swimming-pools.
• whartung 4y ago
  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.
  • Syonyk 4y ago
    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."
    • MerelyMortal 4y ago
      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.
    • Jcampuzano2 4y ago
      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.
• Syonyk 4y ago
  ... 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.
  • Jcampuzano2 4y ago
    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.
  • wildrhythms 4y ago
    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.
• kleiba 4y ago
  Also, motorcyclists obeying the speed limit could save lives.
  • kleiba 4y ago
    Not true.
    • Syonyk 4y ago
  • jalgos_eminator 4y ago
    At least with motorcyclists its their own lives, not others like when car drivers speed excessively.
    • bitwidget 4y ago
  • aussiesnack 4y ago
    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.
• ape4 4y ago
  Just anecdotally, it seems the motorcycle's little brother the escooter is being driven more now. They have tiny front lights.
• tuxone 4y ago
  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?
  • sgt 4y ago
    And more powerful indicators. They should burn your eyes!
    • tuxone 4y ago
      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).
  • ahoy 4y ago
    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.
    • PebblesRox 4y ago
      I think this is something people will look back on in the future and be shocked that so many deaths by car were considered normal.
  • _carbyau_ 4y ago
    > 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.
• thot_experiment 4y ago
  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.
  • Jcampuzano2 4y ago
    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.
    • sgt 4y ago
      Yes! Rider education and constantly practicing is key. It also helps you enjoy motorcycling more too.
      • aussiesnack 4y ago
        > 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.
• janef0421 4y ago
  • ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    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.
  • LAC-Tech 4y ago
    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.
    • janef0421 4y ago
      What do you mean by "heavy motorcycle"? Where are you encountering these motorcycles?
      • LAC-Tech 4y ago
        I mean larger displacement motorcycles for the open road. As opposed to smaller displacement motorcycles for commuting. I encounter them on the road outside my house, which attracts a lot of them on sunny days and weekends.
        • janef0421 4y ago
          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.
        • 4y ago
• acid_burn 4y ago
  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).
  • rabuse 4y ago
    I always ride with LED underglow at night. I believe it makes a huge difference.
• dangus 4y ago
  I’m sure it could but it would be a band-aid. 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.
  • trgn 4y ago
    > 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.
  • _carbyau_ 4y ago
    > 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.
    • dangus 4y ago
      The difference between those activities and driving is that you have a major potential to affect others. For one thing, motorcycles and scooters are so loud that they’re disruptive to residences.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • 4y ago
• vzaliva 4y ago
  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.
  • psd1 4y ago
    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. Cost and time was minimal.
• aussiesnack 4y ago
  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).
  • notch656a 4y ago
    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.
    • mod 4y ago
      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.
• schlauerfox 4y ago
  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?
• mywacaday 4y ago
  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.
• rebelde 4y ago
  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.
  • _carbyau_ 4y ago
    Different take! I like the idea but have concerns over adversarial abuse - mainly because you've been vague over what it does. But I guess a beeping noise in the car stereo to indicate direction of the [thing] would be ok.
• aaron695 4y ago
• perilunar 4y ago
  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.
• andirk 4y ago
  Is it safe to assume the 6 light configuration can be beat out by a SEVEN LIGHT config?
• yosito 4y ago
  As a person who rides motorcycles, I find it interesting that it took a doctoral dissertation to conclude more lights = better. I guess it's another example of why practical experience > academic knowledge.
• keiferski 4y ago
  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): https://www.amazon.in/Speedwav-Anti-Collision-Motorcycle-Taillight-Brake_Light-17/dp/B07Q52N2BX https://www.amazon.in/Speedwav-Anti-Collision-Motorcycle-Tai... 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.
• nedsma 4y ago
  Adventure motorcycle riders have been adding auxiliary lightning kits for a long time, for example, this BMW R1250: https://imgur.com/a/H0nYGIx 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".
• taylodl 4y ago
  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.
• euroderf 4y ago
  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.