Posted on 10/18/2022 1:36:23 PM PDT by aimhigh
Motorcycle drivers are 27 times more likely to die in an accident than those in regular passenger vehicles. Night driving is especially dangerous, accounting for nearly half of all fatal crashes.
Now a new study has found that a reimagined lighting configuration -- six lights running from the top to the bottom of a motorcycle rather than a single headlight -- could help improve other motorists’ abilities to see them.
The study published in the journal Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour was conducted by researchers Pat DeLucia from Rice University and Bradley Weaver from Emory Healthcare, who earned his Ph.D. at Rice.
“Because motorcycles are smaller than many other vehicles, it is more difficult for other drivers to accurately judge their motion on the roadway,” said Weaver, the study’s lead author and a human factors engineer and researcher who did his doctoral dissertation on the topic. “It is particularly difficult at night when a motorcycle has only a single headlight because other drivers can’t see the motorcycle’s full height or width.”
The study revealed that improved lighting could result in other motorists being able to see motorcycles up to 0.8 seconds sooner. “Just under a second might not seem like a lot, but reducing a driver’s response time to a potential collision can make a difference between life and death,” said DeLucia, a professor of psychological sciences who conducts human factors research, particularly related to transportation and health care.
For the study, DeLucia and Weaver recruited 35 people who were between 19 and 70 years old to take part in a laboratory driving simulation. The researchers measured how quickly the participants saw motorcycles with various enhanced lighting configurations that illuminated their full height and width. Each of the new designs improved response times compared with a single headlight, but the participants reacted most quickly to the configuration of six lights.
The study entitled “Effect of motorcycle lighting configurations on drivers’ perceptions of closing during nighttime driving” is available online at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847822001942 .
Ping
At night, people tend to judge the distance of other vehicles based on the separation distance of their two headlights. So driving with a single headlight carries an extra risk.
As a motorcycle rider, lighting has been an issue. Here in California we are allowed to lane split which is also risky mostly because drivers in cages don’t see the bike coming past on the line when they try to quickly change lanes.
Bikers have to be vigilant and as a rider I cringe when I see a fellow really hauling it between cars. Even in rush hour drivers are that much more frustrated with traffic they try to cut over to the next lane quickly without thinking that someone on a bike, maybe not even speeding but fast enough relative to the other cars that in a second or two puts them right in their blind spot. You think the next lane is open but by the time you move a bike is right there at your rear quarter panel. Daytime is worse, not sure if lighting will help. At night lighting would help.
Especially around 2 in the morning
Then, DAY driving is especially dangerous, accounting for the other half of all fatal crashes.
Does no one logically think through what they've written?
Motorcycles don’t need better lighting, they need a force field.
A picture illustration would have been nice.
I think what the article doesn’t point out is that most motorcyclists don’t ride at night...but nighttime still accounts for half the fatalities.
Maybe consider the number of bikes on the road at night versus during the school day, work day, deliveries day, sight-seeing day, and everything being done during the daytime day.
Another safety item I added was a very loud 80 dB horn. Stebel makes them. You have to wire in a switching relay. The normal power to honk the OEM horn closes the relay and routes almost 10 amps to the air horn compressor. It saved me a few times from huge pickups that tried to merge into my lane without looking. The driver will need to do laundry after that encounter, but it sure beats getting run over.
Another new hazard I encountered in Mira Mesa was muslim women wearing an oversize hijab. Their peripheral vision is blocked and they often make lane changes without making an overt effort to look well over their shoulder to clear the hijab impaired view.
“Then, DAY driving is especially dangerous, accounting for the other half of all fatal crashes.
Does no one logically think through what they’ve written?”
I guess you didn’t stop to think that night driving consists of fewer hours than day driving.
So logically, night driving is especially dangerous compared today driving.
Blinding the other drivers coming at you is not such a great thing either.
Drunks on the road near or after 2 AM. Many bikers have been killed by drunk drivers rear ending the biker at a traffic light or stop sign. In California, I took advantage of the lane split to ride forward to the intersection between a couple cars. I never wanted to be sitting inline between cars waiting for a light. Maximum danger mode. I don't have the lane split option in Idaho. I don't ride as much in Idaho as CA. In CA, I put over 1300 miles per month on my bikes. Riding between 7 AM and midnight 7 days a week. In Idaho, maybe one hour a month. No need to commute and not really any necessary travel. I'm simply too busy with work and household responsibilities to enjoy riding my bikes.
Some of the recently manufactured bikes have LED lighting as an upgrade from the original halogen lamps. The LED is extra bright and not friendly to oncoming drivers.
Tell me about it.
Got to get some light on those deer coming up over the bank ...
Over fifty years ago I started building dual head lights on my bikes, along with dual spots. One thing I’d always noticed about singles is that other oncoming drivers took the single light to be a car with a light out and then started guessing about which one it was. Putting more light out front also helped light up the other guy which gave me another edge. I worked at night occasionally so I rigged for it.
I rode bikes for years, day and night, Honda Gold wing being my favorite.
But here in rural Hawaii I quit riding.
I simply got tired of people trying to kill me.
I have to admit that this is my favorite video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Dgv7Ny40v8
I do have a BMW in my shop that could almost do that.
But It needs fuel hoses.
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