When I was commuting daily in the SF fog, I discovered that putting on of these [1] on my helmet did wonders to keep cars further off my tail. It moves the brake light up to eye level for people in SUVs and also triggers on engine braking.
Wish it were cheaper, but was a worthwhile investment for me.
Also, consider looking into airbag vests if you ride regularly. Also expensive but (supposedly) make a huge difference in crash outcomes.
Motorcycle fatality rates have been trending upwards, not downwards[1]. Brake lights on helmets may illuminate one of the culprits: An ever increasing number of American trucks with poor visibility. Sitting on a bike, you're even shorter than a pedestrian and more likely to be completely out of sight. Perhaps its time to start regulating for better visibility, as Europe has done.
As an almost-daily motorcyclist with 15k miles on my current machine (Suzuki DL650), I absolutely agree that the increased proportion of pickup trucks on the road increases the risks for riders, however I suspect it is mainly because the larger, heavier vehicles aggravate the effects of a general deterioration in driving skills and attitudes. One thing about riding a motorcycle is that you are, unless you have a death wish, an active and observant participant in what you are doing, which alone separates you from a seeming majority of those driving cars and trucks. You become much more aware of what others on the road are doing, and what they are doing, in large numbers, is acting like twits.
Driving crazily fast in residential areas, rolling through stop signs, blowing off yellow and even red lights, ignoring turn signals, aggressively tailgating cars, trucks, even motorcyclists like myself, tapping away at their phones and steering with their knees. I think I see just about every variation of all of these things at least several times a week, to the extent that I have thought about the idea of creating some kind of org or foundation or even just a blog to advocate a return to taking driving seriously. I don't have a lot of confidence that I could make a difference though. I suspect a lot of the problem is simply many more cars on infrastructure that we haven't put enough money into for decades, but I'm no expert.
It's a really complicated issue, but you might find some of stuff related to Strong Towns, 15 minute cities, and sorta general modern urbanist things interesting. If we had better transit, more connected communities etc, people who are less interested in driving and driving well would have other options than hours long commutes.
A friend of mine is a volunteer fireman. Since the fire engine sits higher than just about anything, he can see what people are doing behind the wheel in their SUVs. I’d be shocked, he reports, to know just how many of them are absorbed in their devices while driving.
> I don't have a lot of confidence that I could make a difference though.
My recent conclusion is that efforts are worth it even if we're pessimistic about outcome. Often times it is hard to get positive feedback from people you're helping to consider their own behavior even if they don't acknowledge you.
> Perhaps its time to start regulating for better visibility
I argue we should start with the A-pillar. It's not just the big fat American trucks. Every car that is allowed to roll onto the streets is required to have a certain amount of airbag and the push for this seems to have really bad side effects on aspects of safety for everyone not inside the vehicle.
Look at the visibility difference in a 1980s pickup truck and compare it to 2024 model year anything and you would likely feel claustrophobic pretty quickly.
I recently had to frantically wave at a driver about to turn right over a child in the crosswalk. He literally could not see them from his vantage point in his giant SUV.
When I am sitting on my motorcycle I am taller than most people's sitting position in their trucks. While filtering I can look down into their vehicles and see what they're doing on their phones.
Kind of meta, but you deserve recognition for this demonstration of self-awareness. You expressed skepticism politely, then asked specific questions instead of making assumptions. Sometimes HN gives me hope for the rest of the internet.
Sportbikes are lower, but they're not typical. Sportbikes sales trended way down over the past decade, with models being discontinued entirely in some regions. Current sporty-style bikes are generally more upright seating and share engines and platforms with non-sport models. Dual sport/off road bikes have trended upwards, even for riders who never go off pavement, because they're cheap to run and very practical as general purpose motorcycles. More recently, there's been a trend towards large touring bikes as well.
Somewhat yeah, the GS is a tall bike for sure. I have a zrx1200 and I'm still a ton taller than when I am in the miata. Miata is probably one of the lowest riding vehicles you can get and headlights are a problem at night shining in my eyes, where on the motorcycle it is not an issue.
Not really. Outside of a few groups at places like Virginia Tech, motorcycle safety studies don't get much funding. Too niche.
You can use insurance rates as a loose proxy- sportbikes are between one and three orders of magnitude more expensive to insure than adventure bikes, touring bikes or cruisers. But I suspect that has more to do with the average age of the riders.
And bike power. Sportsbikes are often road-legal versions of actual racing bikes, with all that it entails. If a third of cars on the road were tuned-down Ferraris and McLarens, you bet they'd crash left right and center.
Kinda. Power delivery is wildly different between an ADV and a sports bike.
On a sorta dual sport like a Kawasaki KLR650 you get peak torque from the engine at around 2500 RPM, which is comfortably in school zone speed limit territory.
Something like the Yamaha R6 won't really start feel like it's pulling until you get the engine above 8000 RPM at least and then you getting peak torque until around 12,000 RPM. By then you're doing 70kph to 90kph in first gear.
Sports bikes are more comfortable ridden aggressively. Unfortunately that also gives a lot of riders a false sense of skill; right until they moment run into a situation above their skill level and they crash while panicking.
A 1300GS has significantly higher horsepower than an R6, variable valves so it pulls across the rev range, and yet still costs a fraction of an R6's insurance cost; it would appear that the riders have a much larger role in the premium than the engine.
Yeah, bike power has increased significantly. Iirc the age distribution of fatal crashes is double peaked, with one peak in the 20s from young riders who don’t know what they’re doing yet, and another in the late 40s or so from older riders who haven’t ridden in 20 years but still think they know what they’re doing. The skills needed to handle a modern 600cc sports bike with 160+ hp are on another level compared to the skills needed for a 600cc sports bike from the 90s with 110hp.
You either don't live in the US/Canada or you don't ride in areas where people drive full-size and "heavy duty" pickup trucks. The Ford F250 for example has a roof that's 7 feet high.
I wish the USA had similar regulations to Australia where modifications require engineering signoff - typically these lifted trucks would fail a rollover test amongst other broken standards (wheelbase wider than the vehicle, for example).
Australia where there's no enforcement of that engineering signoff if it's done after the initial sale.
or where ADR non compliant vehicles are fine because they're imported under the low volume\non manufacturer paths. (there's more than a few tosser owned gmc denali with lifts that bring the bonnet up to 1.7ish metres)
They are not. You step up over the sill to get into an SUV, then your feet go down into the footwell. Your eyes end up slightly lower than a person standing (and much lower in a sedan), while a motorcycle is very close to exactly standing (they have to be able to put their feet down when stopped).
Very much depends on the style of motorcycle. Sitting on my dual-sport BMW F650GS[1] I can see well over sedans on the road and this is with a slightly lowered version of it.
What's interesting is fatality rates are increasing but injury rates are decreasing.
Seems like something else might be at play. If it is more SUVs and Pickups then I think a brake light helmet would do a lot considering the danger those cars present is being harder to see those below them. But if it is something else, then maybe not as good of a solution.
That seems unfortunately unsurprising. With shorter vehicles (sedans), when you get hit (as a pedestrian, bicyclist, motorcyclist), you are more likely to be pushed over the hood of the car. But with a taller vehicle (truck, SUV), you're more likely to either be propelled forward after hitting the high, flat face of the grille, or get pulled and dragged under the vehicle.
While going over the hood is going to hurt, and can kill you, the other options are much more likely to kill you.
Vehicles with a tall, flat face are more likely to kill instead of injure, from my recall of previous discussions on HN. That's been a trend in vehicle design for a few years now.
There was a news story this week in my area about a car driver who intentionally side-swiped a motorcyclist. The police said what normally kills motorcyclists is that they get thrown and then they hit something solid like a barrier or another car. This guy got lucky that there was an exit nearby and he just slid down the exit lane with minor injuries.
The vast majority of motorcycle crashes are due to excessive speed and inexperience of the rider. Also a car turning into the lane and failing to see the oncoming bike causes many, many accidents.
I ride in Spain, and I don’t know anything about “better visibility” requirements” compared to the U.S. — out here there are giant trucks everywhere: delivery vehicles, industrial trucks, and even Ford Raptors. My close calls have almost always been exclusively with small VW Golf and the SEAT equivalents — distracted, young drivers are (anecdotally) the biggest culprits.
Also in the U.S., you’ll have some 18 year old kid on an R1 that has no business being on an R1, often killing themselves because they think they are Fabio Quateraro at 2am.
I could be wrong, but I’m not seeing data suggesting that “big trucks” in the U.S. are causing more motorcycle deaths. When I drove a Suburban in the U.S., my visibility was far better than when I had a Maserati car. Being able to see over cars allowed me to see more easily when a moto was approaching from the front or rear.
If you want to improve moto safety in the U.S., you need harsher laws against distracted driving, you also need potentially a graduated motorcycle license system like they do in Europe so you don’t have rookies running 1000cc bikes when ten minutes of riding experience.
Some “militant” urban cycling commuters do things like attach a pool noodle horizontally and vertically to create space and visibility. I’d probably hazard a guess that avoiding highway miles also lowers your risk profile substantially.
Freeway driving tends to be the safest driving, in any vehicle. This is because speed deltas are typically low, and there are no cross-streets or stopping.
I think the confusion may be that you commented on freeway safety, whereas the comment you replied to discussed highway safety. Freeways are limited access highways; not all highways are freeways.
'Freeway' is a regional term, but the Federal Highway Administration describes them as limited-access with directions of travel separated by a barrier.
Most Americans use freeways, and most do not use motorcycles. It's always hard to compare a rare thing to a common thing, it always has surprising problems. It's like when people on Reddit worry about radon in their basement, but the incidence rate of whatever cancer it was associated with is so low anyway.
What about agency? "Don't worry about kids choking on Legos, kids don't die from choking on Legos" - but that's because parents well informed and really vigilant about it, compared to say batteries. Motor riders avoid freeways.
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. There are plenty of statistics available showing that freeway driving is the safest driving vehicles do. There's not as much available for motorcycles specifically, which is why I dug up a relevant link and shared it. It seems to hold true for MCs too (and I have no reason to suspect it wouldn't.)
The fact that people describe someone on a bicycle placing less than a pound of foam sticking out from their bicycle, usually shorter than the legally mandated passing distance, as "militant" when trucks and SUVs are purposefully designed by car companies to look as aggressive and angry as possible, really tells why US vulnerable road user safety is plunging while European vulnerable road user safety is going up.
Fatality rates for all vulnerable road users have skyrocketed in the US. You're three times more likely to die if you're a pedestrian and struck by an SUV than a passenger car. They're also horrifically bad for congestion and pollution.
And trucks and SUVs continue to further dominate the marketplace with some automakers no longer selling sedans at all, making it increasingly difficult to not buy an SUV or "crossover."
Those trucks and SUVs, particularly those made by American and Japanese companies, are focused on "aggressive" looks, which means a giant, angry looking, flat-face nose which is incredibly lethal when hitting a person.
"The front end was always the focal point. The rest of the truck is supporting what the rest of the truck is communicating… we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look."
And of course who do these vehicles appeal to? What kind of behavior do they encourage? Every time I'm tailgated it's some dickhead in one of these giant angry-faced trucks.
It's taken the auto "journalists" a while to catch up but they're finally pointing it out:
I helped Alex invent that product! I built the first prototype that helped him get funding and hand assembled some of the first PCB designs. My (old) name is on the patent.
I’m glad to see this was already posted. I wear mine when I ride my 1500w ebike around and I feel so much safer with it. It’s really bright too!
I did not write the production code but I imagine they are tracking the velocity and acceleration vectors using a kalman filter and lighting up the lights when acceleration is negative in the direction of travel. By tracking the velocity vector in addition to acceleration one can eliminate the effects or the driver turning their head. I.e you are not just looking for a specific accelerometer axis to go negative, you have to use a more complex filter to determine the actual physical direction of travel of the device even as it rotates, and check for negative acceleration in that direction. To learn more:
Yussss I’ve been really impressed that Alex has made such a solid product. He was starting up just as my business failed and I warned him it can be a difficult road, but he stuck with it and has delivered something really special.
> moves the brake light up to eye level for people in SUVs
Sad that this would be needed. At that price it's insane to me. OP's article is about democratizing safety and keeping it at a low price, while this over engineered brake light is $160 plus tax. Then a 3350 mAh battery and it lasts only 8-12 hours. Crazy
I have a smiley face rendered in retroreflective tape on the back of mine. I figure it's both bright and triggers the very sensitive human visual system for detecting faces. It's hard to say how much it helps, especially since I put it on basically the same time I started riding at all, but I don't often have people tailgating me. ed: and it was only a couple bucks, that's nice.
Nice idea! Cars owner sometime use a "children inside" sticker. Won’t work for a solo bike obviously but wonder if some other messages might be effective like "Dad of toddlers", "I might be a cop", "vulnerable human"… the smiley is easier to read through.
I have a negative visceral reaction to the "baby on board" stickers on cars. It feels really entitled; to me it says, "be extra careful with me, because my small child is more deserving of safety than other people".
If you'd like to be less unnecessarily cynical, you can instead read it as "there's someone in the vehicle who is more fragile, and less likely to survive an accident."
I’d like to see it like that too but we don’t observe much « oldie inside » stickers. I don’t think he’s cynical and understand the sticker as a polite way to say the driver have more care for his baby than others human being, which is not to blame of course.
Think more like "I can be really distracted and suddenly swerve because my toddler threw their drink at me".
Like with L-plate drivers. Be very careful, don't hate, they're just danger to themselves and everyone else around. They're not entitled, they're warning.
If I was putting a sign on my bike, it would be "Put down your phone [you asshat]". Personal insults optional, but definitely deserved. Maybe a graphic of a mangled and cracked phone would do it.
Ha, I have heard a couple motorcyclists sincerely recommend open-carrying a gun to scare off murderous asshole drivers (which, to be clear, absolutely exist). Neither of those options are on my to-do list though. :)
Anyone who open carries anywhere other than the wilderness or in the field while hunting is at best an attention whore with main-character syndrome . . . at best.
What's more, notwithstanding the freakouts from Europeans and blue-staters about so-called "gun culture," you have no right to employ a firearm anywhere in the US unless someone is actively threatening to kill or maim you or a person near you. Not because you got in a road-rage pissing contest.
If anything, bringing a gun into a situation like that is a great way to get a felony assault/brandishing charge and lose your ability to own a gun period.
Agree, but does the comparaison of "threatening to kill" and "flat out murder [while driving, right?]" stands? I’m not sure you’re allowed to use you gun to clear out your way in case the priority violation was intentional
When I was into road cycling I find having a banana sticking out my rear jersey pocket would make drivers treat me better. I later saw a study that drivers think cyclists are less human, so my theory is it reminded them that I am, in fact, just a person using the road.
Alas, even the banana stopped working, though. Road cycling is horrible now. Too many cars.
I wonder if that's the one the author refers to when they say, "I purchased one of the few similar products on the market. To my surprise, it relied solely on a basic tilt switch, rattling excessively during rides despite claims of “advanced technology."
Oh, now I see that it's just based on an accelerometer. Marketing it as "wireless" seems to suggest that it is monitoring the brake lights rather than "automatically" flashing based on motion.
If you read the article then you will see that the accelerometer is a feature that makes it safer. Apparently, motorcycles can brake even if you don't use the brake, and then you really want the lights to turn on.
> Apparently, motorcycles can
> brake even if you don't use
> the brake
They've even made cars with that "motorcycle" feature, it's most commonly activated by moving a sort of "stick" situated between the driver and passenger seat.
'avar' is talking about "engine braking" with a manual transmission car. Most motorbikes have a manual transmission.
If you gear down (you are cruising in fourth gear and 'gear down' to third gear), your vehicle's speed will reduce.
Brake lights are triggered by the brake pedal or lever/pedal on a motorcycle.
In the case of engine braking, the brake lights are not triggered. Drivers behind them can't anticipate stopping without such a signal.
Try it yourself! Some automatic cars, you can gear down, or just pull your parking brake a little. Cars behind you will come dangerously close to hitting you. Also, don't try this.
Wait, do new cars' parking brakes trigger the brake lights? I also wonder about regenerative braking in electric cars where they slow down simply by lifting your foot off the accelerator.
Lifting your foot off the accelerator in a Nissan Leaf triggers brake lights when in e-Pedal mode (one foot driving, no need to use the brake pedal except in an emergency). It reminds me of a feature that car manufacturers declined to install (due to cost) many years ago, in which brake lights would be triggered by rapidly taking your foot off the accelerator. The idea was that this scenario would usually be followed by emergency braking and that anyone following would see the brake lights come on a fraction of a second earlier.
> it's most commonly activated by moving a sort of "stick" situated between the driver and passenger seat
It's not even specific to the ones with the stick. I happen to enjoy and prefer vehicles with three pedals, but I can say from personal experience that a Ford AODE, 4R70W, or 4R100 will hit hard enough to scare passengers when you drop a gear at highway speed.
A Chrysler 45RFE on the other hand will make a lot more noise but basically no braking effort when you downshift.
Tbf, even cars put the brake lights on based purely on deceleration nowadays in addition to triggering when the brake pedal is pressed. It's covered by legislation in both EU and US, since BEVS and PHEVs can have very aggressive regen braking, and the legislation basically says if your rate of deceleration is above X, then lights need to be on even if the brake pedal hasn't been pressed.
> Basically to every European country (-including Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), but in fact we accept and ship orders worldwide. However some markets might not be setup for automated checkout. If you are experiencing difficulty for shipping to a certain country, contact us so that we can manually create a draft order for you to review and complete.
...they kindof "always" had reliability issues w/ detecting braking accurately, I think switching between the handlebar remote/sensor or phone sensors. It's an existing product with a direct analogue to your project goal, and minimally you could trawl for contacts within customer reviews or online reports to get some ideas about the good/bad in this problem space.
Beware of patents (as relevant), but it's a noble and useful project and goal.
I ride a bicycle, and I deliberately mount the rear light directly at the eye level of typical sedans and SUVs. It's not connected to the brakes, but I find that having the light pulse is enough.
I've got the rear flasher on my road bike tucked as high under the seat as it can get, but even with a large frame bike and relaxed commuting (non-aero) posture I'm shorter than the hood lots of full-size SUVs and pickups, much less the seat.
I agree with the other commenter that a 360 cam on top of the helmet has been the most important thing for deterring tailgating and road rage. I've added reflective tape on the frame, the blinking blinking lights under the seat, a headlight on the handlebars and a headlamp with front white and rear red light, and my backpack has a nearly fluorescent neon green cover. Those all help reduce the "Oops, didn't see you there while looking at my phone" close calls, but do nothing to reduce intentional harassment - that's the function of the camera.
Sorry if I was unclear. I have two rear lights. The first one is mounted on the seat post near the eye level of sedans. The second one is mounted at the bottom of the helmet near the eye level of large SUVs.
If you have a hub generator system, they sell rear lights with controllers which detect changes in the frequency of the wheel rotation and start pulsing when you decelerate.
Yeah, I have the Busch & Müller Toplight [1]. "The Toplight Line Brake Plus senses when the bike slows under braking and glows brighter. It does this by monitoring the AC frequency from the hub. During braking, the AC frequency slows quickly, and then makes the LEDs pulse or flicker, hopefully getting the attention of that fool in the jacked up SUV behind you."
Californian motorcycle commuters are on another level in terms of risk imo. People are lane splitting at like 30mph over the speed of the rest of the traffic and absolutely no one checks for bikers before merging. It is a miracle more people don’t die on the 5 or the 101 every day.
No kidding. The only time I've ever seen motorcycle accidents is on the 10 and 101. Highways in California in general are ridiculous; I'm constantly amazed driving on the 110 that more people don't get killed at the on-ramps with blind curves and everyone going 20 mph over the speed limit.
It's very important to consider failure modes when adding something like this.
You should ensure there's no way the new addition could prevent the brake light from working if the electronics were to fail (either electrically, software glitch, corrosion, bad connection, etc). Because failing to light the brake lights upon braking could directly cause an accident.
Secondary perhaps (though still important) is to prevent false positives (brake light illuminating when just driving along normally). That's still bad, but at least other drivers would be suspicious of it and it's more obvious.
I am considering adding a watchdog logic in the microcontroller that holds a mosfet gate, if there is any signs of failure in logic it would pass through the normal light signal.
A lot is also dependent on how it's wired into the vehicle, as in the main electrical failure modes like open circuit, short to ground, stuck at +12V, etc. Need to be careful about where the responsibility (and liability) is.
I have a second concern re: posi-tap as a connection method. Personally, I would not use a insulation displacement connector like that in a high-vibration environment, at least not without many many hours of accelerated lifetime testing under high vibration load. It's possible they're fine, but at the end of the day you're driving a couple of knives partway through a wire in a way that's non-inspectable.
For field installs perhaps the low-temp soldering butt splices would work well? That would be my go-to in your shoes. It does require cutting and stripping wires, which has its own issues if done by the layperson, but it does connect and encapsulate the joint in a way that should be very robust to vibration and to environmental contamination/corrosion.
Genie soldering is not preferred for high vibration environments. Crimping is considered more reliable. Proper strain relief and anti corrosion treatment is key.
It's not preferred for inline connections, but context is important. In a field installation, you can do up a solder-type butt splice with a lighter if you really need to, whereas crimping requires specialized tools.
True enough, but I would take it one farther and say that a properly executed hand splice is arguably preferable to solder if vibration is a factor. Also, even less tools needed, though not everyone carries a little tube of conductive grease with their electrical tape. (But they should, it makes a decent splice immune to corrosion and a solid, “permanent” repair. )
I have had many, many soldered splices fail on generators, marine engines, other long running equipment.
They just break where the copper meets the solder joint. Copper generally has poor fatigue characteristics, depending on the alloy.
Some of this also comes down to harness design and how it's put back together after the splice. Ideally, the exposure of the splice itself to flexing is very low. I reckon if it's strain relieved/mechanically fastened well and encapsulated, it doesn't really matter what style of splice you use.
Yes, strain relief is key. Even more so for soldered connections where vibration is significant. But really, no joint is immune to problems without some kind of strain relief to prevent stress concentrations at the rigidity transitions.
I agree that soldering probably won’t produce any issues if the wire is not subjected to significant flexure or vibration, or if it properly strain relieved and secured to a bulkhead so there is no movement at the limit of solder wicking. It’s just that I’m usually too lazy to do that perfectly, so I tend towards more forgiving solutions in vehicles and equipment. But sometimes, solder is the one true way, and I always feel better about soldered joints even if I know I’m statistically wrong.
As for wire being 100 percent copper? I’m not sure, but I have definitely noticed different rigidity of copper fibers. Might be impurities, annealing, or work hardening from the drawing process… but there is definitely variation. Some wire can be really susceptible to fatigue cracking, while others seem relatively immune. Not sure of the why.
Also, don’t even get me started on copper plated aluminum fiber wires.
I think the ideal here would be what good trailer brake adapters do in cars that are not factory equipped with a trailer light connector: they have an adapter for each car model that plugs directly in to the stock wiring harness at the taillight. No soldering, no stripping wires, no piercing insulation. However, this complicates the product because you need an adapter for each bike manufacturer and possibly each bike model or even model year.
Another advantage of this is it simplifies installation for the bike owner. Just mount the controller and connect the plugs.
You have to run the business case (at the end of the day all the work you do has to support this).
What's the NRE/tooling and marginal cost to produce a harness variant, and how many units with that variant will you sell? Will people buy the device without the harness adapter?
OE connectors are hard to get, they're typically not some stock Molex or Deutsch dealy-o. I've worked on projects where we 3D printed whole connector blocks to try to do get mating to OE ECUs. It kinda sucks, and you need a whole lot of volume to support that kind of engineering.
Agree, it has to be practical. The better trailer light adapters do it but probably not for every obscure older car/truck model. And really the whole product idea is something that only applies to older low-end bikes. Newer/higher end bikes increasingly have this feature from the factory.
The author did a great job actually building the project, doing a layout and custom design rather than just stitching together off the shelf modules. Good work.
That being said, in 20 years of riding motorcycles and being an ATGATT (all the gear, all the time) kind of rider, I'm mixed on the need for this. It's something I have thought about doing with a direct hardwire to the throttle, but I can't come up with a situation where I genuinely think it will stop a crash. Maybe if someone is tailgating you, but you should be readily letting them pass rather than relying on their reaction skills anyway. Anything that is sudden and requires a large -dv/dt, you are going to hit your brakes. Engine braking alone is usually used in situations where the road/conditions dictates it, so other drivers are naturally slowing down too.
But I suppose it is also an "it can only help" type product.
EV's with regen braking and manual transmission vehicles are in the same boat: unless they light up when slowing, following drivers will be surprised. The bare standard IMO for all vehicles should not be to light up when brakes are applied but instead any time the vehicle begins decelerating. Adding flashing for a strong stop ~~ >0.75g would be a bonus. Given all the sensors and compute hardware on vehicles -- even bikes -- these days it should just be a software touch.
The Technology Connections YT guy has a whole piece analyzing tail lights and I agree with him.
For what it's worth, I've driven a manual for the past 25 years in the US and I haven't noticed any significant increase in tailgated even when I decelerate. I'm definitely the kind of stick driver who avoids braking and pushes in the clutch and lets the vehicle cruise to a lower speed when possible.
Granted, it's also a red (small) pick-up truck, so pretty visible.
> Adding flashing for a strong stop ~~ >0.75g would be a bonus.
Is that a good idea? A flashing brake light could appear as if the brake was let go, which is the exact opposite of the message you would want to send in that case.
Or maybe we are talking about flashing between two different illuminated states?
It’s a common (mandatory?) feature in Europe. Brake lights flash under very hard / emergency brake conditions. The flashing is very rapid, definitely gets your attention, and couldn’t be confused for “letting go” of the brake.
Regarding EVs: That's already implemented that way. Once EVs start braking more than "expected from roll resistance" the braking lights come on.
I think there were also bugs on some Hyundais where they wouldn't stop or start or whatever, but I think that was sorted. With my Skoda I can see the braking lights go on when I change a higher regeneration step.
I guess those situations where you are engine braking and a non-tailgating driver doesn't realize he's closing to an unsafe distance. Then one of a couple of things could cause a collision from this preventably-dangerous situation.
If you drive a manual in a hilly area, or a city with poorly-coordinated traffic lights, it can be an extremely frequent event.
Not that trying to shed tailgaters or trigger-happy brake lights are foolproof. A couple decades ago, my car was totaled by a rear-end collision. I was stopped and stuck in the traffic at a red light. The at-fault driver popped over a little hill with her nose stuck in a map - failing to notice me, the other vehicles, or the red light, in time.
I drove a manual with a 4.6l v8 as my daily driver for 8-10 years.
After taking a motorcycle safety course (in which they teach applying the brake to trigger the lights when engine braking to alert cars behind you )
I did some anecdotal testing / started triggering the brake lights when engine braking in the car. While not effective for everyone behind me, triggering the brake lights did seem to increase the distance people began to slow at, and also their following distance increased.
I was once rear ended, while I was completely stopped, with a train going by in front of me. Since it was a flat level surface I had let me foot off the brake.
I do wonder if I had still had the brake applied if the person would have noticed. (However, this is a poor example as the driver who rear ended me was an unlicensed 16 year old driving illegally ).
While on my motorcycle, I try to always trigger my brake lights. I will trigger them rapidly in scenarios where I have sufficient stopping distance but I would be doing a more aggressive stop in a car as the flashing does seem to get more attention.
Having driven (and engine braked) both diesel and gas manuals - yes, a diesel is much better at slowing "very hard". Beware of doing that if someone is close or inattentive behind you.
With either one, any need-to-brake situation gets more complex - you need to decide "brake pedal, engine, or both?". But I'm not driving manuals because I want driving to be super-simple.
Interesting. I found my diesel Mercedes to not have much engine braking at all (which I attributed to the lack of a throttle plate or any throttling of airflow) as compared to similar size and weight gas cars (which have a throttle plate in the intake).
I like a brake you can choose to tap without engaging proper brakes just to flash your lights backwards, instead of worrying about more smarts in the vehicle that can stop working or whatever.
In best cases this brake gives a bit of feedback when it engages the light but not yet engage the actual brake.
You are free to use this technique to signal "back off" whenever you're engine braking or before you brake or even when you're not even braking but don't like the tailgater
I’ve found this to be true of most cars- where you can very lightly touch the brake where the light will turn on before the actual brakes engage / engage in a noticeable way. It’s a great tool.
Especially important when engine braking down large hills, as I notice people don’t always seem to realize how rapidly they are approaching you if they don’t receive a braking signal.
You're making an assumption that someone tailgating you wants to pass. That isn't really true. A decent percentage of drivers just want to tailgate someone.
> BMW’s dynamic brake light, for example, flashes during emergency braking to alert trailing drivers, greatly enhancing road safety.
Mind you, that this is not enabled in all countries. In the USA the rear fog lights turn on in addition to the brake lights under heavy braking, as flashing the lights weren't allowed.
They remain on until you no longer depress the brakes.
Unsure if they're allowed right now, or whether the ones you see are aftermarket mods.
For BMW you can change the coding (configuration) relatively easy.
There is also a difference in 3 flashes when you touch the brakes, constant flashing while pressing the brakes, or only flashing under having braking.
I can't imagine driving in stop&go traffic where all brake lights are constantly flashing.
I dont understand why exactly this isnt mandatory for past 2 decades in regulated markets like EU.
Over easter I had the displeasure of driving cca 1500km road with family and we experienced quite a few 130kmh -> full stop without warning situations that one barely manages even when breaking full and heavily relies on all others doing the same. In one of the situations a car right in front of us didnt manage and hit already-crashed cars in front of it in billiard style, plastics and glass flying everywhere, luckily nobody was injured but cars were in pieces.
Second case next day - again full stop out of blue, ahead, we & after us managed within 3-4m of each other, but cars after that didnt, again billiard that travelled all the way up to us (we ended up with few scratches on back spoiler, I moved our car a bit ahead when I heard big bangs behind, avoiding bigger damage to us).
One only has a split second to realize how quickly that car ahead is closing in in such scenarios if you dont have other info. Could save hundreds of lives each year easily and easy to implement.
> my US mazda cx5 center brake light flashes when you press the brakes.
That is not a factory feature, it's almost certainly a dealer-installed piece of junk like this (https://pulseprotects.com/product-info/) which the dealer almost certainly charged a stupid amount of money for, and as noted it's not actually legal in the US.
Around me the local Hyundai/Kia chain loves to install those, and I hate them.
> According to a document by SafeLite of America, Inc., that you enclosed, its product Safe-T-Stop "will pulse [the center high mounted brake light] for approximately 6 seconds and reactivate if the brakes are reapplied." You read S5.5.10(d) of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 as requiring "that the third brake light must be wired to be steady-burning," and that you believe that Safe-T-Stop "contravenes this requirement of the standard by varying the brightness of the light."
> We confirm your interpretation. S5.5.10(a), (b), and (c) list the motor vehicle lamps that may flash when they are operated. No stop lamp is among the lamps listed. S5.5.10(d) requires all other lamps to be wired to be steady burning, thus including all stop lamps. Standard No. 108 does not allow a stop lamp that pulses, and a vehicle with a stop lamp that pulses does not meet Federal requirements.
It's clear that there's not much enforcement, since all the dealers I've visited near me install these things by default. If you commit to a car that's not yet delivered, you can negotiate to exclude these, or you can have them remove it (but they'll most likely have cut into the factory harness to install it, so the wiring harness has been modified, which is a negative IMHO).
Personally, I find these devices to be pretty terrible. I would be fine with flashing for high intensity braking, but the flashing is attention grabbing by design, and it's inappropriate in a lot of situations as it distracts from gathering awareness of the surroundings.
IIRC in the USA there are features allowed to be installed aftermarket that aren't legal to be installed as a dealer option (like front side-window tinting)
No one cares, not all states have mandatory inspections, and many inspectors just check if the brake light comes on when they press the brake pedal which would not reveal such an aftermarket device.
The only way to catch something like this would be a road driving test by the inspector, and even here in Europe this is not required.
As you may be aware, the US is a confederation of states. The type of light that flashes several times at the initiation of braking is specifically authorized by the California Vehicle Code, and perhaps in other states.
Do you have a reference as to where it's allowed in the CVC? FMVSS section 108 table I-c specifies this for the stop light:
Steady burning.
Must be activated upon application of the service brakes.
When optically combined with a turn signal lamp, the circuit must be such that the stop signal cannot be activated if the turn signal lamp is flashing. May also be activated by a device designed to retard the motion of the vehicle.
(a) Any motor vehicle may also be equipped with a system in which an amber light is center mounted on the rear of a vehicle to communicate a component of deceleration of the vehicle, and which light pulses in a controlled fashion at a rate which varies exponentially with a component of deceleration.
(b) Any motor vehicle may be equipped with two amber lamps on the rear of the vehicle which operate simultaneously with not more than four flashes within four seconds after the accelerator pedal is in the deceleration position and which are not lighted at any other time. The lamps shall be mounted at the same height, with one lamp located on each side of the vertical centerline of the vehicle, not higher than the bottom of the rear window, or if the vehicle has no rear window, not higher than 60 inches. The light output from each of the lamps shall not exceed 200 candlepower at any angle horizontal or above. The amber lamps may be used either separately or in combination with another lamp.
(c) Any stoplamp or supplemental stoplamp required or permitted by Section 24603 may be equipped so as to flash not more than four times within the first four seconds after actuation by application of the brakes.
You'd only see it on newer bikes with ABS, they seem likely to have more sensors and "electronics" in the brake system. In that kind of system the deceleration could be inferred from existing speed signals. I wouldn't be surprised if ABS systems already estimate the engine braking torque directly.
What is the general consensus on ABS braking in motorcycles? Really curious to hear from anyone who has rode a bike equipped with it.
For some reason the idea of a bike interfering with brake controls seems like it could feel unsafe if the system isn't designed really well. Extremely low margin for error when it comes to braking on a 2 wheel vehicle especially in suboptimal conditions.
I could see ABS braking being fine for the back tire, but the idea of automatic braking on the front tire would scare me.
There's a great FortNine video showing the pros and cons. The very short of it is that the perfect rider can stop faster without ABS but ABS + good technique can achieve very similar results while drastically reducing the consequences of panic braking.
This isn't mentioned in the video, but ABS also enables more aggressive use of linked brake systems, which also improve worst-case safety when a rider panics and uses only one brake or the wrong brake.
Front brake is where it's most beneficial as the front wheel is what keeps the bike upright. If you lock the front wheel, especially in a turn, the bike falls over almost instantly.
edit: Rear wheel locking gives a bit more time to react.
Personally the main safety benefit is for emergency braking in wet conditions. ABS also allows to use full brakes in the wet without worrying so much about falling over. That's the real benefit, real-world it shortens your stopping distance because of that increased confidence in using the brake.
Yes, as I understand it ABS catches the occasion where your braking overwhelms the wheel-road friction the wheel locks and starts to skid. If you're before that threshold then it doesn't activate and doesn't negatively affect anything, if you do lock then ABS activating is better than not having it and the remedy is the same as without ABS where you release the brake enough for the wheel to turn again. A skid is the least desirable in terms of control and stopping distance, having ABS lets a driver hit the brakes hard in an emergency with more confidence.
> ABS also allows to use full brakes in the wet without worrying so much about falling over. That's the real benefit, real-world it shortens your stopping distance because of that increased confidence in using the brake.
I think this point is worth emphasizing. You'll hear from a lot of folks on motorcycle forums that ABS will increase stopping distance. Which is true for great drivers performing threshold braking. How many motorcycle riders actually practice front braking on their non ABS bike until they lock up the front wheel to really learn the limits of themselves and their bike? For most people, you'll be able to use more brakes and stop in a shorter distance in more conditions with ABS while maintaining control of the vehicle.
I'd consider myself a pretty good rider but I've caught myself once or twice jamming on the brakes when a chaotic accident unfolds in front of me and the lizard brain takes over. I live in LA so lots of traffic and lots of accidents are common and any technology that helps my lizard brain keep me alive in a positive in my book.
I recently crashed cornering during a light mist and now I'm on the looking for anything that helps lean slippage. I know you can't fix stupid but still hoping something is out there. My old and busted vstrom needs an upgrade.
There's no such thing as "consensus" in any hobby, but the general trends are:
1. ABS on motorbikes has been proven to prevent lock-ups and therefore accidents, especially among newer riders who are more likely to grab all the brakes in situations where modulation of brake application is required to prevent an accident.
2. Traditionalists say that ABS keeps new riders from having to learn to correctly modulate the brakes and thus keeps them reliant on ABS forever, and that experienced riders can stop quicker without ABS. (The last point is technically true but it requires a highly-skilled rider and a certain set of conditions.)
ABS is bikes IS typically designed very well. (Although I have to take the Internet's word for it since my bike is a 1979 GS850G.)
Most, if not all, modern motorcycles already come with ABS braking. For many motorcycles it's also adjustable, for example switching off ABS in the rear while retaining it in the front, for those riding offroad and dirt.
Many bikes also come with cornering ABS, meaning that if the motorcycle is at an angle, the ABS comes in gradually.
Overall ABS is pretty much a "solved" problem right now, on motorcycles 2012+ at the very least. Earlier ABS wasn't that great. I had a BMW F800GS in 2010 and the ABS was horrible on bumpy roads. You basically had no braking if it kicked in.
Would you prefer to read a full list of EU member countries instead? As well as Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, ABS is also required in the UK.
I'm in South Africa, and most of the popular brands have ABS by default, including top sellers like BMW R1300GS, Honda Africa Twin, KTM 890. This is big adventure country, like Australia. I think the superbikes also have ABS now since about 10 years ago.
ABS on a motorcycle is pretty great on the roadways. The issue I've heard from people is that it can't be disabled off road on many motorcycles. Most owners just unplugged the sensors entirely as a result, causing the system to indicate failure.
It’s not automatic braking. It’s automatically letting off the brakes for a fraction of a second to prevent locking up, aka anti-lock braking system
If it does kick in you get a slight pulsing on the leaver which means unless you are emergency braking, back off.
As far as the front goes, you never want the front to lock as you are almost certainly going down.
For off-road abs modes normally they turn rear off completely so you can deliberately lock it and decrease the sensitivity on the front but still keep the abs on for the front.
In 2019 I was a bicycling a lot, and really wanted to get something with a motor, so I could be a bit faster/farther/not so sweaty with my trips. I had access to a car but rarely used it.
I really don't like many inherent safety issues with motorcycles and never seriously considered obtaining one, but kept wanting a two-wheeled vehicle with a motor.
I'd ridden a 50cc scooter in 2019 for a few days, and it was fine then, but I never considered one seriously since.
Eventually, in 2020 it was an emergency room doctor who suggested I look at 'real scooters' instead of the 50cc things.
So I did, eventually I ended up owning a 170cc scooter/moped thing, and it feels infinitely safer than a motorcycle, and a bicycle. I've done 20,000 miles on scooters since then, probably, all over the world,
including Denver to Canada and back once.
Cheaper lighter more efficient, than motorcycles. more stable, lower center of mass, better wind protection, useful storage options, too, compared to motorcycles and bicycles.
I ride mine year round, no issues.
I wrote a page trying to capture some of the upsides, but it's hard to get the tone right on the internet:
Why make such a definitive claim with zero evidence to back it up?
The justifications in that section are nonsense and seem to boil down to a skill issue on your part.
Sure, around the city a scooter makes sense for a lot of people, though I believe they provide a false sense of security. The lower barrier to entry also lowers the "perceived" risk.
Feeling safer !== safer
Personally, I feel much safer on one of my motorcycles than a scooter. But that's because I am extremely comfortable on a motorcycle and can make it do exactly what I want, when I want.
Any marginal safety benefit you're getting from riding a scooter is being completely erased by the disregard for basic road safety principles shown in the footage.
Scooters are great in the city, but they are kinda boring when it comes to touring or hitting the twisties. My dad's 200cc Vespa is just about interesting enough to ride on hills, but anything below that is just yawn.
I wondered once if it would be possible to ride a motorcycle safely if I drove carefully (everyone I know who rides has been in at least one serious accident).
I thought: I could look at the data, but I see so many motorcyclists driving dangerously that the data wouldn't teach me much.
So then I thought: I bet if I look at the accident rate for women riders it would be interesting.
I found that in the UK, male riders have seven times the accident rate of female riders.
So I guess how you ride does make a huge difference.
Age is another differentiator. Take young men out of the equation and you get a much better picture.
Another interesting stat is that the majority of motorcycle crashes are
single vehicle accidents, ie. the rider going down by themselves. While this can be equipment failure, in most cases this will be crashing due to riding too fast or above skill level.
So yes, riding very carefully at safe speeds and avoiding dangerous situations (I choose my routes to avoid situations where drivers are likely to be in their phone — mostly freeways and freeway-like streets in cities) will make bikes a lot more safe.
This sadly does not say anything because the kilometers driven is unknown in this statistic, right?
So it could be that female drivers do not drive that many kilometers compared to males, which results in less accidents.
Also, is this accidents total men / women? Then it would not even take into account, that there are significant more male riders.
GP didn't specify, but IIRC vehicle incident rates are usually specified in terms of distance driven/ridden, so the stats they were looking at may have already taken that into account.
There are so many ways to die on a motorcycle that are outside of your control. Someone could not be paying attention, make a mistake, not see you, be drunk, etc.
I knew someone at a previous company that was here one day then gone the next due to a non-highway accident caused by someone else IIRC.
It's sort of like being friends with someone who plays low-chance russian roulette for fun in their free time.
“If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you've already blown it.”
― Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
Engine braking with an internal combustion engine generates a vacuum in the intake manifold, because the throttle is closed while the pistons suck air.
(Performance cars sometimes have vacuum gauges to measure this. Aftermarket ones can be installed.)
A brake light could be rigged to activate past a certain a vacuum threshold. (There would be some false positives that are possibly not worth caring about.)
For all the engineering described in the article, I'm surprised it doesn't mention this possibility, if only to give reasons why it was discarded. (Maybe it's a bad solution; I have no ide!)
It seems that a vacuum-driven brake light could possibly have an advantage of kicking in faster than a motion detector, because it could trigger as soon as the revs are dropping with the throttle closed, before the clutch engages to actually connect the engine braking to the wheel.
I.e. blip-throttle before downshift -> vacuum kicking in / light comes on -> downshift completes, actual braking begins.
My motorcycle pet peeve is that if you ride bicycles routinely the control differences between bikes and motorcycles become potentially dangerous, especially while riding the motorcycle. I'm not sure how to align their controls more, but if your bike has a rotary handle shifter and one day on the motorcycle you "shift" with the throttle, it's not going to go well. There are a number of other possible control goofs you can do that aren't great.
I ride both regularly and I don't really have a problem switching between them. For me, the overall experience is so entirely different between the two, that my brain knows to treat them differently. Just like people who own riding lawn mowers don't really have difficulties driving their car afterward.
(Blipping the throttle accidentally should never cause an emergency unless other things are already going wrong: for example, if you are riding a bike whose power is way beyond your skill level or you are following someone too closely.)
> Just like people who own riding lawn mowers don't really have difficulties driving their car afterward.
My riding mower is tank-steer (zero turn)... pretty hard to use those skills on a car. But steering wheels basically work the same on all the equipment I've got with those; some easier to turn than others depending on geometry and power assist. The pedals are more likely to be different --- the mower has a friction lever on a panel to set the throttle / engine speed and levers you hold to go forward and back on right and left (so this does steering too); the tractor has similar throttle level, and then a pedal that you rotate to go forward or back with both wheels (all wheels if you put it into 4x4) and it has a splitable brake pedal if you want to brake on one side or the other.
But yeah; none of that makes it hard to go back and drive a car. Other than sometimes it'd be nice to do some tight turns at the expense of my tires if I could control each side individually.
1991, first time riding a motorcycle... After a 15 minutes instruction course near the barn from which we extracted the 200 cm³ bike, off we were in Idaho's mountains. As a 15 years-old French person, the whole experience was exhilarating and it wasn't long before I started to relax and open the throttle a bit on the dirt track...
As an avid mountain bike cyclist back in France, I hung to what seemed familiar - which worked well enough until the first sharp bend came... It came way too fast, I panicked, cycling reflexes took over, I shifted my weight back and pressed both handle levers hard - getting the (to a cyclist) very unexpected result of both disengaging the clutch and thus losing all engine braking while locking the front wheel hard (why did they put the front break where the rear, which helps me control slides, is supposed to be ?)... I was catapulted, followed by the bike... Nothing broken - just bruises, rashes and the flattened ego of a lucky idiot.
As a daily cyclist, being a motorcycle passenger on big engines always terrifies me: I'm on two wheels, with bicycle-like positions and trajectories... But everything happens monstrously too fast, my instincts for braking and acceleration are all out of calibration, so I always feel that we cannot possibly survive the next turn !
So, yes - I recommend not mixing bicycling and motorcycling.
I regularly swap between a scooter and motorcycle, owning both.
The big difference being left hand leaver on a motorcycle is the clutch, rear brake is right foot, on a scooter, no clutch so the left hand leaver is the rear break.
When I first got the scooter I was expecting the obvious accidental muscle memory confusion with the left leaver when swapping vehicles. For some reason it just never happened, never accidentally gone for the clutch on the scooter and never accidentally gone for the rear brake on the bike.
Another problem is that on most bycicles right leaver is the REAR brake, while on motoryclces it FRONT. It make difference when braking in turns. I was actually considering swapping my bike brakes left to right but it turns out one of the cables is too short. :(
The UK and Us drive on different sides of the roads and are taught to user different arms for signals as a result. If I'm going to turn I need to both slow down by using the brakes and signal to others. thus I want the rear brakes (even thought front can stop faster I don't want to risk losing traction on that wheel in traffic)
I standardize all my two wheeled vehicles to the motorcycle layout for this reason. It bothers my push bike friends to an amusing degree but it's much safer for me. Plus I feel I have greater control of the critical front brake with my most dextrous and strong hand.
The section 62 of the Highway Traffic Act says this:
> Intermittent red light restricted
> (14) Subject to subsections (14.1), (15) and (17.1), no person shall use a lamp, other than turning signal lamps or the vehicular hazard warning signal lamps commonly known as four way flashers, that produces intermittent flashes of red light.
There is an exemption for bicycles but not motorcycles.
Your site really needs a video :) I've run Hyperlites on my bikes forever (https://hyperlites.com/). I like them as they don't interfere with the original brake light, and provide additional lights higher up on the bike.
If only somebody would make motorcycles less noisy.. I dream of the day where there are neither mosquitos nor motorcycle noise. Two most annoying things during the summer.
Current electric motorcycles can already be pretty silent, to the detriment of pedestrians. Some have added artificial noises because of this, like ones already used in cars.
I like this! Have thought of it for both bikes and cars, I drive manual and occasionally just downchange coming up to lights or off motorways.
Also used to have a zx636 and bought an LED brake light that flashed obnoxiously when triggered (F1 style), I like to think the safety it added offset how annoyed I was probably making everyone behind me.
I rode a Honda 350 for seven years starting with the Oil Crisis, before bike headlights even turned on automatically, although I kept mine lit. The biggest problem was other drivers not noticing me coming on or from the side, because compared to cars bikes were and still are rare on the road. They'd turn as I was passing their blind spot, or pull out in front of me from a cross street, etc. Seemed like I'd have a close call about once per week, but I don't recall ever having a threat of being hit from behind.
> It turned out that when I accelerate strongly, I pull the bike back, at some point in the rotation of the pedals. This is rightfully detected as a sudden deceleration of the bicycle.
I guess on a much heavier motorcycle the deceleration of the motorcycle is actually a meaningful indicator of the combination driver+motorcycle slowing down.
Good example how to push forward and do the thing.
Otherwise, is it me or the info on the product page is a bit dry. No size specs, no instructions, not enough pics. It is like the last step to convert is not fully complete yet.
One of the issues usually is to make sure the part is compatible with the bike as otherwise you need to spend money to get it and then “try it”. The suggestion with tge pictures how to put it would be useful as well.
Great idea. I thought about this when I rented an electric Renault car, and found that in regenerative braking mode… brake lights do not come on when lifting the foot off the accelerator. A friend in a car behind said he found it confusing and wondered what I was doing. Such a bizarre design flaw not to have brake lights come on when this happens.
I've always felt safer in motorcycles compared to scooters. Something about the handling in scooters doesn't feel reassuring. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's more apparent when you ride on patchy, broken roads. It's much easier riding over bumps, zigzagging to avoid potholes on a motorcycle. Of course, I'm comparing motorcycles and scooters of similar weight. Riding a litre class machine is a different dimension altogether.
> “Moreover, during intense braking scenarios, it flashes proportionately to the braking intensity.”
In Europe, a lot of modern cars have a similar feature. When braking particular hard (eg: a sudden emergency stop from highway speeds) the brake lights will flash rapidly to warn drivers behind you. It’s a very good safety feature, IMO. But not legal in North America?
I don't think you can have it both ways, either all lights are the same OR one is more important and drivers will all think first "is it this or that light? do I hit the brakes? maybe this means he is stopping slowly so I will risk my rear end for no reason?" before they act. I'm sure it isn't going to backfire
Many of them flashy lights are just flashy. Some underregulated regions you'll quickly get tired of every car being like a christmas tree trying to one up each other what patterns their stop or turning lights do or how bright they are (and for front lights just how bright they are and how many).
This makes it an arms race because the average driver loses sensitivity and then what used to be enough is now too subdued and unsafe (even if technically enough by law). Reminds me of how some regions require ad breaks to have audio not louder than the main production, while others are just straight up loudness wars on your ears
There's something to be said for setting a standard and keeping driving competence high and being less annoying to others including pedestrians.
(A bike is a slightly different story, it's harder to see how far away is a solo light. But then this is also a culture where half the riders believe that deafening bystanders is important for safety so sometimes hard to sympathize)
This was a great read — love how it blends real-world frustration with a builder’s mindset.
The insight about how little attention goes into motorcycle specific safety tech is spot on. The market tends to over-index on cars, but the stakes for motorcyclists are arguably higher per mile. Would love to see more open source or modular frameworks emerge in this space something others could build on top of, regionally or by use-case.
Curious if you explored anything around passive detection (weather, terrain, phone telemetry) or if most of your work focused on rider input and behavior?
Where's the quest to make motorcycles a huge bit quieter? I am so fed up with all the loud motorcycles in my city. Seems pretty arrogant of people with loud vehicles to think that we all want to hear them.
This is an old problem that was solved and not solved. Most motorcycles in the past 25 years are decently quiet, unless you rev it up at night and everyone will hear it. But it is the same with the cars. At the same time, there is a significant number of motorcycles with non-street legal mufflers that add some decibels, you hear those even during the day at low revs.
I have 2 bikes, both stock exhaust, both quiet. The older one with the Euro 3 and larger engine is more quiet than the one that is Euro 5 and has a small engine, but none is loud enough to wake anyone at night if I come home at that time. At the same time, a couple of neighbors with fancy Akrapovic cans will wake up the entire street every time they pass by.
This is something I want for all of my street bikes. I roll off the throttle a fair bit before grabbing the brakes on my Ruckus and way earlier on my modified Metropolitan. Always watching the mirrors while doing so. And my 1966 Sears ( made by Gilera ) only has a brake light switch on the rear brake pedal. I'm so conditioned to use the front brakes on a motorcycle that I often forget to tap the rear brake to signal other drivers. I'll be ordering 3 myself if they ship to the US, or getting my buddy in the UK to snag them for me.
I do very similar things manually already. I engine break and apply very light rear break pressure to trigger my break lights, and let off the rear break and reapply it for the “flashing” effect. Once at a complete stop and in neutral I flash my break lights off/on until the car behind me is at a complete stop.
The benefit of this is tool is that it reduces cognitive load while also working in emergency situations where I’m more focused on operating the motorcycle than signaling to others.
I sold my bike and gave up riding because it was just too dangerous. It's not just that people don't see you, they're not even looking anymore, they're on their phones.
It's a nice story. Some statistics might help motivate concern. E.g., The disproportionate risk per mile for motorcycling is chilling. But in California "rear end" as a category appears to be only about 15% of all MC accidents, and even then the category doesn't distinguish being hit from hitting.
I suspect a lot of the effort here is marketing, so you might extract extra value (and do more good) with a complementary product.
A big benefit might come from controllable red light and warning bell for the rider when you're more than 15% over speed limit. Speed is the biggest risk by far, and also the risk you can control (since no brake light can defend against the inattentive driver). It's way too easy to not realize how fast you're going.
Indeed, for that you could also factor in stopping distances. Starting out with lighter, nimble bikes, I got in real trouble with the 650+ lb monsters that dither about stopping. Those would get a lower threshold. And you'd apply a higher threshold for open road vs. traffic, etc.
Then build out a UI workflow and logging, and it might grow into an interesting intelligent copilot product line addressing all the pilot-controllable factors. As a motorcyclist, it's really on you to save your own bacon.
Out of curiosity, wouldn't an accelerometer alone not work for this purpose? I see you've hooked it up with engine RPM as well, but realistically you want to indicate when you're slowing down, no matter the reason, right? Is there something I'm fundamentally missing here?
This is a great idea though, and definitely something that more bikes should come stock with. There's a very clear benefit for safety.
Thank you for your question, it does not hook with the engine RPM, but I did have an issue with the sample rate syncing with the engine rpm therefore picking up noise, I solved that issue with randomizing the sample interval with pseudo random numbers.
I use https://www.neutrinoblackbox.com/ for same with great success. I tapped my brake line electronics and the app lets me set up the sensitivity for when decelerating brightens them up. Also a lot of other fun features you can read about on their site.
The issue with brake lights is they are binary on/off. It would likely be better if the brightness would vary by how hard the braking is. Like getting brighter and brighter and then rapidly flashing.
Brightness would be hard to discern in the sun. Cars have center stop light strip, it would be cool if amount of illuminated segments would be proportional to deceleration. Probably not legal though.
Every car would have to have the same brightness for their brake lights for this to work well. At night, cars in the US have their brake lights partially illuminated as running lights. On some cars these are so bright that it looks like they're actively braking.
That's actually brilliant. Same issue w/ some sports cars too or even cars coasting in slow stop and go traffic when coming up from behind from high speed traffic.
same as with cars - it seems the technology that is actually built in the products is just the annoying / useless ones instead of technology that would be actually useful e.g. to safety
I crashed recently after someone in front applied break too hard and too late. Couldn’t walk for two weeks—something like BrakeBright would’ve been a gamechanger. How do you prevent false triggers on bumpy roads though?
"Committed to empowering users, I developed a subsequent version incorporating a USB port. Currently, I’m finalizing user-friendly software utilities, enabling riders to easily update BrakeBright firmware, customize features, and personalize the system to match individual riding styles and preferences."
A brake light that requires system administration?
I was only thinking about bikes, but I lift/downshift in my BRZ all the time. I guess there is much less fear of being mangled by a cel phone user when I'm in the car. Looks like I will be ordering 4 of these.
If you are thinking commercial you may want to look into IP issues to see if there are active patents (probably expired by now?)
As far as design choices, based on my journeys in similar types of projects: (just my$.02, not a critique)
USB will be a significant point of failure. The connector has voltage present and electrochemical activity will destroy the connector over time unless you can keep it in a clean, low humidity environment. Consider a different connector or a wireless SOC to eliminate this point of failure and make a completely potted unit possible. If you use usb, make sure there is no voltage normally present, even from the data connections, and you have a good watertight plug for the access port. Everything gets wet on bikes. Everything. nRF52840 or ESP32C3 would be my go to choices here, but there are a lot of excellent candidates. BLE is probably the protocol you will want to use. This will facilitate making a simple app to do firmware updates and feature adjustments.
Consider eliminating the need for RPM input. This will be a significant point of failure and your greatest installation headache across different motorcycles.
As a failsafe, control the lamp output pass-through with a pulled-up mosfet of at least 50a capacity (you won’t ever see this high current, but it protects from bulb changing short circuits and other unknowns)
An Infineon BTS5016-2EKA or its low side equivalent is probably a great choice, and gives you both of the switches you need in one package, for less than $3, with full protection features. ( I assume you will need one to interrupt existing signaling and one to light where’s there is no activation from the brake switches)
The main thing is the lamp must light with regular inputs even if the circuit loses power or the chip gets a hole drilled in it. If it comes on when it shouldn’t, that is also bad, but not as bad.
Idk what sensor you are using, but consider the icm20948, it’s not too expensive ($3-4) and it has onboard sensor fusion. Only downside is it’s 1.8v, but if you use the nRf52840 that’s not an issue. Even so, level conversion isn’t too big a deal. Sensor fusion will greatly simplify understanding what’s going on.
Since power consumption is not critical I would consider using an ML algorithm on the sensor data to detect hazard conditions, lie downs, etc and filter out steep uphill/downhill false activation/failure to activate.
You could collect the data easily and train a simple model with off the shelf tools designed specifically for doing that kind of thing with MCUs. I forget the name but it’s commonly used for voice action or gesture training. You might want to train on a few bikes though, especially ones with different vibration frequencies.
Now you can add a subscription model for premium flashing features and “enhanced AI” with in-app GPT4 access to an interactive tour guide and a “best rides” feature customized to your riding style and search history! Business could pay-to play, and insurance companies, motorcycle manufacturers, and tire sellers would love that personally identifiable riding data! (Please, don’t)
That requires you to have a bike where the current gear is recognized digitally and the bike has a standard way of getting that data to an external device (or it requires you to put a sensor on the gear lever). For that matter, it requires you to have a bike with a manual transmission. There's lots of electric bikes, bikes with fully automatic transmissions, and bikes that simply don't have the electronics (not to mention a standard way to interface with them).
Actually in thinking about it, if you had access (digitally) to the current gear, you probably also have tachometer and velocity data as well through whatever that connection is anyway.
On the other hand, a motion sensor works for all bikes and is quite robust.
You can infer the gear based on vehicle speed and engine speed.
That's how gear indications work on most manual cars too: there's no actual sensor telling what gear is selected (other than reverse, and sometimes clutch pedal and neutral).
An existing brake light product, the Billy light from Clearwater, integrates with the BMW canbus to pull the bike's acceleration data and use that as a basis for what this light appears to do.
I can imagine there's enough of a market for BMW accessories that they can make it work, but if you want to address other bikes with the same device, you need a different approach.
Agreed, I was more responding to the idea of tying into existing sensors or motorcycle data as noted above. The light I mentioned is part of a bigger lighting system that works through a CAN interface and has all kinds of control of settings through a somewhat convoluted overlay on existing bike inputs, like press this switch, then these, then turn the wonder wheel to adjust brightness.
20 years riding bikes and I never knew I have this problem. Even now I don't have it. It sounds like a nice gimmick but not a solution to a real problem, at least not for European traffic where bikes are reasonably fine and where the top cause of motorcycle fatalities is riding way too fast.
EV’s need this too! I’m noticing my Tesla isn’t doing a great job turning on the brake lights during one pedal driving. It seems to need pretty hard deceleration before they come on.
I actually think it is lame when engine braking activates the brake light. There are two distinct behaviors: slowing down gently, with engine braking, and slowing down intensely with physical brake application. When I am engine braking like going down a long hill I do not want to flag the drivers behind me that I am braking ... I just want to use the compression of the engine to regulate my speed. Anyone who lives in a mountainous area will tell you this. Seeing solid brake lights going down the hill is a red flag / skill issue. Some manufacturers have begun to add artificial brake lights during engine braking though and I find it disingenuous.
I’m trying to understand this comment - are you saying that there’s an advantage to drivers behind you not thinking you’re braking? As in - you don’t want them to think you’re coming to a complete stop when you’re regulating your speed?
Or are you saying that you don’t want them to think you have a skill issue ?
I live in a semi mountainous area, where people driving automatics ride their brakes most of the way down the mountains.
(Relatively small mountains, elevations ranging from 1,900-2,700 with the surrounding area around 1,000-1,100 elevation. So not the same necessity of engine braking as somewhere out west where the elevation is 3-6k average with mountains up to 12-14k).
engine braking is not braking - is what I am trying to imply
holding your speed or decellerating mildly is not the same as braking. if i gear down into a higher rpm and hold my speed, or perhaps decel ever so slightly - its not worth alerting the driver behind you. most people over-react to brake lights and will see your brakes as "I should apply brakes too" when in this particularly case, they should not.
I can't think of a single circumstance where compression braking should cause a brake light to illuminate. the rate of decelleration is so small compared to even a gentle tap of the brakes, that it will merely confuse drivers behind you.
thanks for your comment, the device is self leveling, I live in a hilly Scotland, it keeps adjusting itself with the slopes and only reacts to sudden changes.
When I was commuting daily in the SF fog, I discovered that putting on of these [1] on my helmet did wonders to keep cars further off my tail. It moves the brake light up to eye level for people in SUVs and also triggers on engine braking.
Wish it were cheaper, but was a worthwhile investment for me.
Also, consider looking into airbag vests if you ride regularly. Also expensive but (supposedly) make a huge difference in crash outcomes.
[1] https://www.brakefreetech.com/products/brake-free
Motorcycle fatality rates have been trending upwards, not downwards[1]. Brake lights on helmets may illuminate one of the culprits: An ever increasing number of American trucks with poor visibility. Sitting on a bike, you're even shorter than a pedestrian and more likely to be completely out of sight. Perhaps its time to start regulating for better visibility, as Europe has done.
[1]https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-motorcyc...
As an almost-daily motorcyclist with 15k miles on my current machine (Suzuki DL650), I absolutely agree that the increased proportion of pickup trucks on the road increases the risks for riders, however I suspect it is mainly because the larger, heavier vehicles aggravate the effects of a general deterioration in driving skills and attitudes. One thing about riding a motorcycle is that you are, unless you have a death wish, an active and observant participant in what you are doing, which alone separates you from a seeming majority of those driving cars and trucks. You become much more aware of what others on the road are doing, and what they are doing, in large numbers, is acting like twits.
Driving crazily fast in residential areas, rolling through stop signs, blowing off yellow and even red lights, ignoring turn signals, aggressively tailgating cars, trucks, even motorcyclists like myself, tapping away at their phones and steering with their knees. I think I see just about every variation of all of these things at least several times a week, to the extent that I have thought about the idea of creating some kind of org or foundation or even just a blog to advocate a return to taking driving seriously. I don't have a lot of confidence that I could make a difference though. I suspect a lot of the problem is simply many more cars on infrastructure that we haven't put enough money into for decades, but I'm no expert.
It's a really complicated issue, but you might find some of stuff related to Strong Towns, 15 minute cities, and sorta general modern urbanist things interesting. If we had better transit, more connected communities etc, people who are less interested in driving and driving well would have other options than hours long commutes.
A friend of mine is a volunteer fireman. Since the fire engine sits higher than just about anything, he can see what people are doing behind the wheel in their SUVs. I’d be shocked, he reports, to know just how many of them are absorbed in their devices while driving.
> I don't have a lot of confidence that I could make a difference though.
My recent conclusion is that efforts are worth it even if we're pessimistic about outcome. Often times it is hard to get positive feedback from people you're helping to consider their own behavior even if they don't acknowledge you.
And I also noticed it's impossible to chat on the phone while riding a motorcycle due to heavy gloves :)
Vision Zero exists and its entire output, at least in the US, seems to be some somewhat clever yard signs and good vibes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
> its entire output, at least in the US, seems to be some somewhat clever yard signs and good vibes
That's confusing to me. Many cities have worldwide have implemented vision zero techniques and saved many lives, including in the US.
> Perhaps its time to start regulating for better visibility
I argue we should start with the A-pillar. It's not just the big fat American trucks. Every car that is allowed to roll onto the streets is required to have a certain amount of airbag and the push for this seems to have really bad side effects on aspects of safety for everyone not inside the vehicle.
Look at the visibility difference in a 1980s pickup truck and compare it to 2024 model year anything and you would likely feel claustrophobic pretty quickly.
I recently had to frantically wave at a driver about to turn right over a child in the crosswalk. He literally could not see them from his vantage point in his giant SUV.
When I am sitting on my motorcycle I am taller than most people's sitting position in their trucks. While filtering I can look down into their vehicles and see what they're doing on their phones.
At first glance I want to strongly disagree, but who am I to argue with your experience.
What bike do you ride, and what vehicles are you calling trucks? Specifically.
Kind of meta, but you deserve recognition for this demonstration of self-awareness. You expressed skepticism politely, then asked specific questions instead of making assumptions. Sometimes HN gives me hope for the rest of the internet.
An F750GS and a DRZ400SM are my main bikes (out of an entire garage full of stuff). For trucks I'm talking about F-150s and similar.
Do those two bikes have a higher / more upright riding position that a typical sportbike?
Sportbikes are lower, but they're not typical. Sportbikes sales trended way down over the past decade, with models being discontinued entirely in some regions. Current sporty-style bikes are generally more upright seating and share engines and platforms with non-sport models. Dual sport/off road bikes have trended upwards, even for riders who never go off pavement, because they're cheap to run and very practical as general purpose motorcycles. More recently, there's been a trend towards large touring bikes as well.
https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/motorcycle-industry-q1...
Yes your enduros and such are taller than sport bikes, but a Harley would be much lower, yes?
Somewhat yeah, the GS is a tall bike for sure. I have a zrx1200 and I'm still a ton taller than when I am in the miata. Miata is probably one of the lowest riding vehicles you can get and headlights are a problem at night shining in my eyes, where on the motorcycle it is not an issue.
I don't have a brake light on my helmet on motorcycle but I added DOT-C2 tape to the back and sides of it, stuff like this: https://www.amazon.com/THKULKME-Reflective-Reflector-Waterpr...
I see, thanks for the info. I’m licensed but haven’t owned a bike in years.
Do we have stats on whether more sports bike riders are involved in crashes that bikes with better visibility?
Not really. Outside of a few groups at places like Virginia Tech, motorcycle safety studies don't get much funding. Too niche.
You can use insurance rates as a loose proxy- sportbikes are between one and three orders of magnitude more expensive to insure than adventure bikes, touring bikes or cruisers. But I suspect that has more to do with the average age of the riders.
I think you mean one and three times more expensive. 3 orders of magnitude is 1000 times more expensive!
And bike power. Sportsbikes are often road-legal versions of actual racing bikes, with all that it entails. If a third of cars on the road were tuned-down Ferraris and McLarens, you bet they'd crash left right and center.
Weirdly, an adventure bike with higher horsepower will have cheaper insurance than a race replica with less horsepower.
Kinda. Power delivery is wildly different between an ADV and a sports bike.
On a sorta dual sport like a Kawasaki KLR650 you get peak torque from the engine at around 2500 RPM, which is comfortably in school zone speed limit territory.
Something like the Yamaha R6 won't really start feel like it's pulling until you get the engine above 8000 RPM at least and then you getting peak torque until around 12,000 RPM. By then you're doing 70kph to 90kph in first gear.
Sports bikes are more comfortable ridden aggressively. Unfortunately that also gives a lot of riders a false sense of skill; right until they moment run into a situation above their skill level and they crash while panicking.
A 1300GS has significantly higher horsepower than an R6, variable valves so it pulls across the rev range, and yet still costs a fraction of an R6's insurance cost; it would appear that the riders have a much larger role in the premium than the engine.
Yeah, bike power has increased significantly. Iirc the age distribution of fatal crashes is double peaked, with one peak in the 20s from young riders who don’t know what they’re doing yet, and another in the late 40s or so from older riders who haven’t ridden in 20 years but still think they know what they’re doing. The skills needed to handle a modern 600cc sports bike with 160+ hp are on another level compared to the skills needed for a 600cc sports bike from the 90s with 110hp.
Yes. The DRZ especially is a dirt bike which is noticeably higher set than a supersports. You pay for it a bit in on-road manoeuvrability though.
Mine is the SM, which is a little shorter, but is ultra-maneuverable, far more so than a normal street bike.
"sumo is love, sumo is life"
Hello fellow dizzer enjoyer
You either don't live in the US/Canada or you don't ride in areas where people drive full-size and "heavy duty" pickup trucks. The Ford F250 for example has a roof that's 7 feet high.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Trucks/comments/10vb432/f250s_just_...
The roof on the old F150 is barely above the door sill on the new truck.
...and then people go and put bigger rims and lift kits on them.
I wish the USA had similar regulations to Australia where modifications require engineering signoff - typically these lifted trucks would fail a rollover test amongst other broken standards (wheelbase wider than the vehicle, for example).
Australia where there's no enforcement of that engineering signoff if it's done after the initial sale.
or where ADR non compliant vehicles are fine because they're imported under the low volume\non manufacturer paths. (there's more than a few tosser owned gmc denali with lifts that bring the bonnet up to 1.7ish metres)
>Sitting on a bike, you're even shorter than a pedestrian and more likely to be completely out of sight.
Not true at all except for the lowest-sitting cruisers. Most bikes put you eye level with an SUV driver and taller bikes above.
Can you explain why?
I see other people saying the same thing, but it totally defies my intuition.
Isn't the seat in an SUV objectively much higher up than the seat of a bike? Aren't your feet much higher on the floor of an SUV, than on a bike?
What am I missing here?
They are not. You step up over the sill to get into an SUV, then your feet go down into the footwell. Your eyes end up slightly lower than a person standing (and much lower in a sedan), while a motorcycle is very close to exactly standing (they have to be able to put their feet down when stopped).
Very much depends on the style of motorcycle. Sitting on my dual-sport BMW F650GS[1] I can see well over sedans on the road and this is with a slightly lowered version of it.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_G650GS
What's interesting is fatality rates are increasing but injury rates are decreasing.
Seems like something else might be at play. If it is more SUVs and Pickups then I think a brake light helmet would do a lot considering the danger those cars present is being harder to see those below them. But if it is something else, then maybe not as good of a solution.
That seems unfortunately unsurprising. With shorter vehicles (sedans), when you get hit (as a pedestrian, bicyclist, motorcyclist), you are more likely to be pushed over the hood of the car. But with a taller vehicle (truck, SUV), you're more likely to either be propelled forward after hitting the high, flat face of the grille, or get pulled and dragged under the vehicle.
While going over the hood is going to hurt, and can kill you, the other options are much more likely to kill you.
Vehicles with a tall, flat face are more likely to kill instead of injure, from my recall of previous discussions on HN. That's been a trend in vehicle design for a few years now.
Fortnine did a video on Grilles That Kill:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU
They're hideous too.
We desperately need vehicle safety regulations which consider pedestrians and cyclists.
Trucks in particular are apparently being purposed built to kill.
There was a news story this week in my area about a car driver who intentionally side-swiped a motorcyclist. The police said what normally kills motorcyclists is that they get thrown and then they hit something solid like a barrier or another car. This guy got lucky that there was an exit nearby and he just slid down the exit lane with minor injuries.
Fatality rates are actually pretty flat I would say if you look at the relative numbers.
The vast majority of motorcycle crashes are due to excessive speed and inexperience of the rider. Also a car turning into the lane and failing to see the oncoming bike causes many, many accidents.
I ride in Spain, and I don’t know anything about “better visibility” requirements” compared to the U.S. — out here there are giant trucks everywhere: delivery vehicles, industrial trucks, and even Ford Raptors. My close calls have almost always been exclusively with small VW Golf and the SEAT equivalents — distracted, young drivers are (anecdotally) the biggest culprits.
Also in the U.S., you’ll have some 18 year old kid on an R1 that has no business being on an R1, often killing themselves because they think they are Fabio Quateraro at 2am.
I could be wrong, but I’m not seeing data suggesting that “big trucks” in the U.S. are causing more motorcycle deaths. When I drove a Suburban in the U.S., my visibility was far better than when I had a Maserati car. Being able to see over cars allowed me to see more easily when a moto was approaching from the front or rear.
If you want to improve moto safety in the U.S., you need harsher laws against distracted driving, you also need potentially a graduated motorcycle license system like they do in Europe so you don’t have rookies running 1000cc bikes when ten minutes of riding experience.
Trucks are not really the problem.
Some “militant” urban cycling commuters do things like attach a pool noodle horizontally and vertically to create space and visibility. I’d probably hazard a guess that avoiding highway miles also lowers your risk profile substantially.
Freeway driving tends to be the safest driving, in any vehicle. This is because speed deltas are typically low, and there are no cross-streets or stopping.
https://safetrec.berkeley.edu/2023-safetrec-traffic-safety-f... (Ctrl+F "Crash Location of Motorcycle Fatal Crashes")
I think the confusion may be that you commented on freeway safety, whereas the comment you replied to discussed highway safety. Freeways are limited access highways; not all highways are freeways.
That's a regional difference in terms. I would generally call a limited access highway, a "highway".
https://brilliantmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/big-fast-road.j...
'Freeway' is a regional term, but the Federal Highway Administration describes them as limited-access with directions of travel separated by a barrier.
https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/planning/processes/statewide/relate...
The Federal definition of highway is basically any public road.
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/chapter-I/subchapter-D...
Complex thing to analyze, no?
Most Americans use freeways, and most do not use motorcycles. It's always hard to compare a rare thing to a common thing, it always has surprising problems. It's like when people on Reddit worry about radon in their basement, but the incidence rate of whatever cancer it was associated with is so low anyway.
What about agency? "Don't worry about kids choking on Legos, kids don't die from choking on Legos" - but that's because parents well informed and really vigilant about it, compared to say batteries. Motor riders avoid freeways.
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. There are plenty of statistics available showing that freeway driving is the safest driving vehicles do. There's not as much available for motorcycles specifically, which is why I dug up a relevant link and shared it. It seems to hold true for MCs too (and I have no reason to suspect it wouldn't.)
I had not heard of/seen the pool noodle idea - looks like a simple and effective way to draw attention to cycling safety.
Here's a video of the NYC Pool Noodle Bike Ride: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97YJOQRQ4Ds&ab_channel=Stree...
The fact that people describe someone on a bicycle placing less than a pound of foam sticking out from their bicycle, usually shorter than the legally mandated passing distance, as "militant" when trucks and SUVs are purposefully designed by car companies to look as aggressive and angry as possible, really tells why US vulnerable road user safety is plunging while European vulnerable road user safety is going up.
“Looking” aggressive is irrelevant.
It was tongue in cheek
Fatality rates for all vulnerable road users have skyrocketed in the US. You're three times more likely to die if you're a pedestrian and struck by an SUV than a passenger car. They're also horrifically bad for congestion and pollution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
And trucks and SUVs continue to further dominate the marketplace with some automakers no longer selling sedans at all, making it increasingly difficult to not buy an SUV or "crossover."
Those trucks and SUVs, particularly those made by American and Japanese companies, are focused on "aggressive" looks, which means a giant, angry looking, flat-face nose which is incredibly lethal when hitting a person.
https://www.indieauto.org/2022/11/28/designer-of-2020-gmc-si...
"The front end was always the focal point. The rest of the truck is supporting what the rest of the truck is communicating… we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look."
And of course who do these vehicles appeal to? What kind of behavior do they encourage? Every time I'm tailgated it's some dickhead in one of these giant angry-faced trucks.
It's taken the auto "journalists" a while to catch up but they're finally pointing it out:
https://tech.yahoo.com/transportation/articles/mean-machines...
Sitting on my bike, I am taller than any pedestrian. I have visibility and I am visible over most European cars. Just saying.
[flagged]
lol what?
I assume this is indicating that it's a pipe dream in the US under the current regime.
I helped Alex invent that product! I built the first prototype that helped him get funding and hand assembled some of the first PCB designs. My (old) name is on the patent.
I’m glad to see this was already posted. I wear mine when I ride my 1500w ebike around and I feel so much safer with it. It’s really bright too!
That's cool. What principles is it based on and was it difficult to clean up the signals to get a reliable input?
I did not write the production code but I imagine they are tracking the velocity and acceleration vectors using a kalman filter and lighting up the lights when acceleration is negative in the direction of travel. By tracking the velocity vector in addition to acceleration one can eliminate the effects or the driver turning their head. I.e you are not just looking for a specific accelerometer axis to go negative, you have to use a more complex filter to determine the actual physical direction of travel of the device even as it rotates, and check for negative acceleration in that direction. To learn more:
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit_AHRS
https://learn.adafruit.com/how-to-fuse-motion-sensor-data-in...
I got one for my birthday! What a great product. It does exactly what it says it does, and has no more complexity than required.
Yussss I’ve been really impressed that Alex has made such a solid product. He was starting up just as my business failed and I warned him it can be a difficult road, but he stuck with it and has delivered something really special.
> moves the brake light up to eye level for people in SUVs
Sad that this would be needed. At that price it's insane to me. OP's article is about democratizing safety and keeping it at a low price, while this over engineered brake light is $160 plus tax. Then a 3350 mAh battery and it lasts only 8-12 hours. Crazy
I have a smiley face rendered in retroreflective tape on the back of mine. I figure it's both bright and triggers the very sensitive human visual system for detecting faces. It's hard to say how much it helps, especially since I put it on basically the same time I started riding at all, but I don't often have people tailgating me. ed: and it was only a couple bucks, that's nice.
Nice idea! Cars owner sometime use a "children inside" sticker. Won’t work for a solo bike obviously but wonder if some other messages might be effective like "Dad of toddlers", "I might be a cop", "vulnerable human"… the smiley is easier to read through.
I have a negative visceral reaction to the "baby on board" stickers on cars. It feels really entitled; to me it says, "be extra careful with me, because my small child is more deserving of safety than other people".
If you'd like to be less unnecessarily cynical, you can instead read it as "there's someone in the vehicle who is more fragile, and less likely to survive an accident."
I’d like to see it like that too but we don’t observe much « oldie inside » stickers. I don’t think he’s cynical and understand the sticker as a polite way to say the driver have more care for his baby than others human being, which is not to blame of course.
That's unnecessary.
Think more like "I can be really distracted and suddenly swerve because my toddler threw their drink at me".
Like with L-plate drivers. Be very careful, don't hate, they're just danger to themselves and everyone else around. They're not entitled, they're warning.
I interpret them similarly. I also think, "I might be lacking sleep, in a hurry, or have way too much on my mind."
Becoming a parent brought upon quite an increase in my empathy for other parents.
If I was putting a sign on my bike, it would be "Put down your phone [you asshat]". Personal insults optional, but definitely deserved. Maybe a graphic of a mangled and cracked phone would do it.
Then there's the guy in the "armed cyclist" jersey who goes on a cross-country ride every year.
heh, or you could join an OMC (outlaw motorcycle club) and get patched up * for an implied 'i will literally kill you if you get close to me'
* don't do this
Ha, I have heard a couple motorcyclists sincerely recommend open-carrying a gun to scare off murderous asshole drivers (which, to be clear, absolutely exist). Neither of those options are on my to-do list though. :)
IMO, there are very few circumstances where "more guns" is an improvement. I don't think introducing guns to motorvehicle altercations is one of them.
Anyone who open carries anywhere other than the wilderness or in the field while hunting is at best an attention whore with main-character syndrome . . . at best.
What's more, notwithstanding the freakouts from Europeans and blue-staters about so-called "gun culture," you have no right to employ a firearm anywhere in the US unless someone is actively threatening to kill or maim you or a person near you. Not because you got in a road-rage pissing contest.
If anything, bringing a gun into a situation like that is a great way to get a felony assault/brandishing charge and lose your ability to own a gun period.
I didn't say it was a good idea, rather the opposite. But people do try to flat out murder motorcyclists.
Agree, but does the comparaison of "threatening to kill" and "flat out murder [while driving, right?]" stands? I’m not sure you’re allowed to use you gun to clear out your way in case the priority violation was intentional
When I was into road cycling I find having a banana sticking out my rear jersey pocket would make drivers treat me better. I later saw a study that drivers think cyclists are less human, so my theory is it reminded them that I am, in fact, just a person using the road.
Alas, even the banana stopped working, though. Road cycling is horrible now. Too many cars.
Riding with a pannier does wonders to reduce close passes. The more drivers see you as a person on a bicycle rather than as a vehicle, the better.
Another reason may be that they are more concerned about scratching their paint than they are about your well-being.
I wonder if that's the one the author refers to when they say, "I purchased one of the few similar products on the market. To my surprise, it relied solely on a basic tilt switch, rattling excessively during rides despite claims of “advanced technology."
Does it use an accelerometer to turn on?
Is it safe in case of an accident? The helmet is quite round, and the not round shape may be a problem.
Thank you! This is cool. I hadn't seen it before.
I saw one of these last week and just assumed it was tied into the brake lights but it was always on.
Oh, now I see that it's just based on an accelerometer. Marketing it as "wireless" seems to suggest that it is monitoring the brake lights rather than "automatically" flashing based on motion.
If you read the article then you will see that the accelerometer is a feature that makes it safer. Apparently, motorcycles can brake even if you don't use the brake, and then you really want the lights to turn on.
'avar' is talking about "engine braking" with a manual transmission car. Most motorbikes have a manual transmission.
If you gear down (you are cruising in fourth gear and 'gear down' to third gear), your vehicle's speed will reduce.
Brake lights are triggered by the brake pedal or lever/pedal on a motorcycle.
In the case of engine braking, the brake lights are not triggered. Drivers behind them can't anticipate stopping without such a signal.
Try it yourself! Some automatic cars, you can gear down, or just pull your parking brake a little. Cars behind you will come dangerously close to hitting you. Also, don't try this.
Wait, do new cars' parking brakes trigger the brake lights? I also wonder about regenerative braking in electric cars where they slow down simply by lifting your foot off the accelerator.
Lifting your foot off the accelerator in a Nissan Leaf triggers brake lights when in e-Pedal mode (one foot driving, no need to use the brake pedal except in an emergency). It reminds me of a feature that car manufacturers declined to install (due to cost) many years ago, in which brake lights would be triggered by rapidly taking your foot off the accelerator. The idea was that this scenario would usually be followed by emergency braking and that anyone following would see the brake lights come on a fraction of a second earlier.
> it's most commonly activated by moving a sort of "stick" situated between the driver and passenger seat
It's not even specific to the ones with the stick. I happen to enjoy and prefer vehicles with three pedals, but I can say from personal experience that a Ford AODE, 4R70W, or 4R100 will hit hard enough to scare passengers when you drop a gear at highway speed.
A Chrysler 45RFE on the other hand will make a lot more noise but basically no braking effort when you downshift.
Tbf, even cars put the brake lights on based purely on deceleration nowadays in addition to triggering when the brake pedal is pressed. It's covered by legislation in both EU and US, since BEVS and PHEVs can have very aggressive regen braking, and the legislation basically says if your rate of deceleration is above X, then lights need to be on even if the brake pedal hasn't been pressed.
Yes and my Kia ev6 needed a software update to do that. I had a couple incidents where people were surprised by my deceleration before the update.
Now in regen the brake lights come on above a certain harvest level.
That is a great tip. Thank you! I wonder if they’ll ship to the UK?
Yes, they will:
> Where do you ship to?
> Basically to every European country (-including Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), but in fact we accept and ship orders worldwide. However some markets might not be setup for automated checkout. If you are experiencing difficulty for shipping to a certain country, contact us so that we can manually create a draft order for you to review and complete.
https://www.brakefreetech.eu/pages/support
I've seen several of these on the few riders down here, so I guess yes, one way or another.
Also a helmet cam does wonders for wannabe-tailgaters
Take a look into Lumos bike helmets: https://ridelumos.com/products/remotes-and-mounts
They started via a kickstarter in 2015: https://www.google.com/search?q=lumos+helmet+history
...they kindof "always" had reliability issues w/ detecting braking accurately, I think switching between the handlebar remote/sensor or phone sensors. It's an existing product with a direct analogue to your project goal, and minimally you could trawl for contacts within customer reviews or online reports to get some ideas about the good/bad in this problem space.
Beware of patents (as relevant), but it's a noble and useful project and goal.
Retroreflective tape on your helmet is also pretty good, and much cheaper.
I ride a bicycle, and I deliberately mount the rear light directly at the eye level of typical sedans and SUVs. It's not connected to the brakes, but I find that having the light pulse is enough.
Are you on a penny farthing? A tallbike?
I've got the rear flasher on my road bike tucked as high under the seat as it can get, but even with a large frame bike and relaxed commuting (non-aero) posture I'm shorter than the hood lots of full-size SUVs and pickups, much less the seat.
I agree with the other commenter that a 360 cam on top of the helmet has been the most important thing for deterring tailgating and road rage. I've added reflective tape on the frame, the blinking blinking lights under the seat, a headlight on the handlebars and a headlamp with front white and rear red light, and my backpack has a nearly fluorescent neon green cover. Those all help reduce the "Oops, didn't see you there while looking at my phone" close calls, but do nothing to reduce intentional harassment - that's the function of the camera.
Sorry if I was unclear. I have two rear lights. The first one is mounted on the seat post near the eye level of sedans. The second one is mounted at the bottom of the helmet near the eye level of large SUVs.
If you have a hub generator system, they sell rear lights with controllers which detect changes in the frequency of the wheel rotation and start pulsing when you decelerate.
Why not just connect them to the hand brake levers?
That is so cool! Do you know of any brands/models?
Yeah, I have the Busch & Müller Toplight [1]. "The Toplight Line Brake Plus senses when the bike slows under braking and glows brighter. It does this by monitoring the AC frequency from the hub. During braking, the AC frequency slows quickly, and then makes the LEDs pulse or flicker, hopefully getting the attention of that fool in the jacked up SUV behind you."
[1] https://www.rivbike.com/products/dyno-rack-light?srsltid=Afm...
Californian motorcycle commuters are on another level in terms of risk imo. People are lane splitting at like 30mph over the speed of the rest of the traffic and absolutely no one checks for bikers before merging. It is a miracle more people don’t die on the 5 or the 101 every day.
No kidding. The only time I've ever seen motorcycle accidents is on the 10 and 101. Highways in California in general are ridiculous; I'm constantly amazed driving on the 110 that more people don't get killed at the on-ramps with blind curves and everyone going 20 mph over the speed limit.
I feel like I see more motorcycles doing stupid things on the roadway than I used to.
It's very important to consider failure modes when adding something like this.
You should ensure there's no way the new addition could prevent the brake light from working if the electronics were to fail (either electrically, software glitch, corrosion, bad connection, etc). Because failing to light the brake lights upon braking could directly cause an accident.
Secondary perhaps (though still important) is to prevent false positives (brake light illuminating when just driving along normally). That's still bad, but at least other drivers would be suspicious of it and it's more obvious.
I am considering adding a watchdog logic in the microcontroller that holds a mosfet gate, if there is any signs of failure in logic it would pass through the normal light signal.
A lot is also dependent on how it's wired into the vehicle, as in the main electrical failure modes like open circuit, short to ground, stuck at +12V, etc. Need to be careful about where the responsibility (and liability) is.
I have a second concern re: posi-tap as a connection method. Personally, I would not use a insulation displacement connector like that in a high-vibration environment, at least not without many many hours of accelerated lifetime testing under high vibration load. It's possible they're fine, but at the end of the day you're driving a couple of knives partway through a wire in a way that's non-inspectable.
For field installs perhaps the low-temp soldering butt splices would work well? That would be my go-to in your shoes. It does require cutting and stripping wires, which has its own issues if done by the layperson, but it does connect and encapsulate the joint in a way that should be very robust to vibration and to environmental contamination/corrosion.
Genie soldering is not preferred for high vibration environments. Crimping is considered more reliable. Proper strain relief and anti corrosion treatment is key.
It's not preferred for inline connections, but context is important. In a field installation, you can do up a solder-type butt splice with a lighter if you really need to, whereas crimping requires specialized tools.
True enough, but I would take it one farther and say that a properly executed hand splice is arguably preferable to solder if vibration is a factor. Also, even less tools needed, though not everyone carries a little tube of conductive grease with their electrical tape. (But they should, it makes a decent splice immune to corrosion and a solid, “permanent” repair. )
I have had many, many soldered splices fail on generators, marine engines, other long running equipment.
They just break where the copper meets the solder joint. Copper generally has poor fatigue characteristics, depending on the alloy.
I thought electrical wire was generally ~100% Cu.
Some of this also comes down to harness design and how it's put back together after the splice. Ideally, the exposure of the splice itself to flexing is very low. I reckon if it's strain relieved/mechanically fastened well and encapsulated, it doesn't really matter what style of splice you use.
Yes, strain relief is key. Even more so for soldered connections where vibration is significant. But really, no joint is immune to problems without some kind of strain relief to prevent stress concentrations at the rigidity transitions.
I agree that soldering probably won’t produce any issues if the wire is not subjected to significant flexure or vibration, or if it properly strain relieved and secured to a bulkhead so there is no movement at the limit of solder wicking. It’s just that I’m usually too lazy to do that perfectly, so I tend towards more forgiving solutions in vehicles and equipment. But sometimes, solder is the one true way, and I always feel better about soldered joints even if I know I’m statistically wrong.
As for wire being 100 percent copper? I’m not sure, but I have definitely noticed different rigidity of copper fibers. Might be impurities, annealing, or work hardening from the drawing process… but there is definitely variation. Some wire can be really susceptible to fatigue cracking, while others seem relatively immune. Not sure of the why.
Also, don’t even get me started on copper plated aluminum fiber wires.
I think the ideal here would be what good trailer brake adapters do in cars that are not factory equipped with a trailer light connector: they have an adapter for each car model that plugs directly in to the stock wiring harness at the taillight. No soldering, no stripping wires, no piercing insulation. However, this complicates the product because you need an adapter for each bike manufacturer and possibly each bike model or even model year.
Another advantage of this is it simplifies installation for the bike owner. Just mount the controller and connect the plugs.
You have to run the business case (at the end of the day all the work you do has to support this).
What's the NRE/tooling and marginal cost to produce a harness variant, and how many units with that variant will you sell? Will people buy the device without the harness adapter?
OE connectors are hard to get, they're typically not some stock Molex or Deutsch dealy-o. I've worked on projects where we 3D printed whole connector blocks to try to do get mating to OE ECUs. It kinda sucks, and you need a whole lot of volume to support that kind of engineering.
Agree, it has to be practical. The better trailer light adapters do it but probably not for every obscure older car/truck model. And really the whole product idea is something that only applies to older low-end bikes. Newer/higher end bikes increasingly have this feature from the factory.
Consider adding logic to test if the bulb is open. That would be a killer feature for sales.
With BLE integration and an app showing you great deals on bulbs.
And also ads for unrelated products down at the bottom of the page in the app.
ads are amateur hour - gotta make it a subscription and really milk those users.
Also offer a lifetime subscription, then the API disappears after 6 months
The author did a great job actually building the project, doing a layout and custom design rather than just stitching together off the shelf modules. Good work.
That being said, in 20 years of riding motorcycles and being an ATGATT (all the gear, all the time) kind of rider, I'm mixed on the need for this. It's something I have thought about doing with a direct hardwire to the throttle, but I can't come up with a situation where I genuinely think it will stop a crash. Maybe if someone is tailgating you, but you should be readily letting them pass rather than relying on their reaction skills anyway. Anything that is sudden and requires a large -dv/dt, you are going to hit your brakes. Engine braking alone is usually used in situations where the road/conditions dictates it, so other drivers are naturally slowing down too.
But I suppose it is also an "it can only help" type product.
EV's with regen braking and manual transmission vehicles are in the same boat: unless they light up when slowing, following drivers will be surprised. The bare standard IMO for all vehicles should not be to light up when brakes are applied but instead any time the vehicle begins decelerating. Adding flashing for a strong stop ~~ >0.75g would be a bonus. Given all the sensors and compute hardware on vehicles -- even bikes -- these days it should just be a software touch.
The Technology Connections YT guy has a whole piece analyzing tail lights and I agree with him.
For what it's worth, I've driven a manual for the past 25 years in the US and I haven't noticed any significant increase in tailgated even when I decelerate. I'm definitely the kind of stick driver who avoids braking and pushes in the clutch and lets the vehicle cruise to a lower speed when possible.
Granted, it's also a red (small) pick-up truck, so pretty visible.
> Adding flashing for a strong stop ~~ >0.75g would be a bonus.
Is that a good idea? A flashing brake light could appear as if the brake was let go, which is the exact opposite of the message you would want to send in that case.
Or maybe we are talking about flashing between two different illuminated states?
It’s a common (mandatory?) feature in Europe. Brake lights flash under very hard / emergency brake conditions. The flashing is very rapid, definitely gets your attention, and couldn’t be confused for “letting go” of the brake.
Quick flashing or high/low would be the way, but quick flashing is very attention getting (with led)
Hard braking on modern cars activate the hazards lights, which are the blinkers.
Regarding EVs: That's already implemented that way. Once EVs start braking more than "expected from roll resistance" the braking lights come on.
I think there were also bugs on some Hyundais where they wouldn't stop or start or whatever, but I think that was sorted. With my Skoda I can see the braking lights go on when I change a higher regeneration step.
You’d only be surprised if you were absolutely on someones ass. Engine braking is not quite that effective.
In fact this will make traffic worse due to stop n go effect from brakelights triggering more brakelights instead of coasting.
I guess those situations where you are engine braking and a non-tailgating driver doesn't realize he's closing to an unsafe distance. Then one of a couple of things could cause a collision from this preventably-dangerous situation.
Def not a daily event but not unheard of.
If you drive a manual in a hilly area, or a city with poorly-coordinated traffic lights, it can be an extremely frequent event.
Not that trying to shed tailgaters or trigger-happy brake lights are foolproof. A couple decades ago, my car was totaled by a rear-end collision. I was stopped and stuck in the traffic at a red light. The at-fault driver popped over a little hill with her nose stuck in a map - failing to notice me, the other vehicles, or the red light, in time.
I drove a manual with a 4.6l v8 as my daily driver for 8-10 years.
After taking a motorcycle safety course (in which they teach applying the brake to trigger the lights when engine braking to alert cars behind you )
I did some anecdotal testing / started triggering the brake lights when engine braking in the car. While not effective for everyone behind me, triggering the brake lights did seem to increase the distance people began to slow at, and also their following distance increased.
I was once rear ended, while I was completely stopped, with a train going by in front of me. Since it was a flat level surface I had let me foot off the brake.
I do wonder if I had still had the brake applied if the person would have noticed. (However, this is a poor example as the driver who rear ended me was an unlicensed 16 year old driving illegally ).
While on my motorcycle, I try to always trigger my brake lights. I will trigger them rapidly in scenarios where I have sufficient stopping distance but I would be doing a more aggressive stop in a car as the flashing does seem to get more attention.
Tbh I find my manual gearbox car not able to slow very hard at all with engine braking. However it's admittedly not a Diesel engine.
Having driven (and engine braked) both diesel and gas manuals - yes, a diesel is much better at slowing "very hard". Beware of doing that if someone is close or inattentive behind you.
With either one, any need-to-brake situation gets more complex - you need to decide "brake pedal, engine, or both?". But I'm not driving manuals because I want driving to be super-simple.
Interesting. I found my diesel Mercedes to not have much engine braking at all (which I attributed to the lack of a throttle plate or any throttling of airflow) as compared to similar size and weight gas cars (which have a throttle plate in the intake).
I like a brake you can choose to tap without engaging proper brakes just to flash your lights backwards, instead of worrying about more smarts in the vehicle that can stop working or whatever.
In best cases this brake gives a bit of feedback when it engages the light but not yet engage the actual brake.
You are free to use this technique to signal "back off" whenever you're engine braking or before you brake or even when you're not even braking but don't like the tailgater
I’ve found this to be true of most cars- where you can very lightly touch the brake where the light will turn on before the actual brakes engage / engage in a noticeable way. It’s a great tool.
Especially important when engine braking down large hills, as I notice people don’t always seem to realize how rapidly they are approaching you if they don’t receive a braking signal.
You're making an assumption that someone tailgating you wants to pass. That isn't really true. A decent percentage of drivers just want to tailgate someone.
Well then they can tailgate someone else.
> BMW’s dynamic brake light, for example, flashes during emergency braking to alert trailing drivers, greatly enhancing road safety.
Mind you, that this is not enabled in all countries. In the USA the rear fog lights turn on in addition to the brake lights under heavy braking, as flashing the lights weren't allowed.
They remain on until you no longer depress the brakes.
Unsure if they're allowed right now, or whether the ones you see are aftermarket mods.
For BMW you can change the coding (configuration) relatively easy.
There is also a difference in 3 flashes when you touch the brakes, constant flashing while pressing the brakes, or only flashing under having braking.
I can't imagine driving in stop&go traffic where all brake lights are constantly flashing.
only flashes on heavy braking, normal use is not affected
I dont understand why exactly this isnt mandatory for past 2 decades in regulated markets like EU.
Over easter I had the displeasure of driving cca 1500km road with family and we experienced quite a few 130kmh -> full stop without warning situations that one barely manages even when breaking full and heavily relies on all others doing the same. In one of the situations a car right in front of us didnt manage and hit already-crashed cars in front of it in billiard style, plastics and glass flying everywhere, luckily nobody was injured but cars were in pieces.
Second case next day - again full stop out of blue, ahead, we & after us managed within 3-4m of each other, but cars after that didnt, again billiard that travelled all the way up to us (we ended up with few scratches on back spoiler, I moved our car a bit ahead when I heard big bangs behind, avoiding bigger damage to us).
One only has a split second to realize how quickly that car ahead is closing in in such scenarios if you dont have other info. Could save hundreds of lives each year easily and easy to implement.
US mandated automatic emergency braking starting in 2029.
my US mazda cx5 center brake light flashes when you press the brakes.
> my US mazda cx5 center brake light flashes when you press the brakes.
That is not a factory feature, it's almost certainly a dealer-installed piece of junk like this (https://pulseprotects.com/product-info/) which the dealer almost certainly charged a stupid amount of money for, and as noted it's not actually legal in the US.
Around me the local Hyundai/Kia chain loves to install those, and I hate them.
I bought the car used. I did not install it, but can not claim the previous owner did or did not.
Doesn't seem to be illegal enough if dealers are installing them
I've got a NHTSA letter bookmarked [1] that says
> According to a document by SafeLite of America, Inc., that you enclosed, its product Safe-T-Stop "will pulse [the center high mounted brake light] for approximately 6 seconds and reactivate if the brakes are reapplied." You read S5.5.10(d) of Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 108 as requiring "that the third brake light must be wired to be steady-burning," and that you believe that Safe-T-Stop "contravenes this requirement of the standard by varying the brightness of the light."
> We confirm your interpretation. S5.5.10(a), (b), and (c) list the motor vehicle lamps that may flash when they are operated. No stop lamp is among the lamps listed. S5.5.10(d) requires all other lamps to be wired to be steady burning, thus including all stop lamps. Standard No. 108 does not allow a stop lamp that pulses, and a vehicle with a stop lamp that pulses does not meet Federal requirements.
It's clear that there's not much enforcement, since all the dealers I've visited near me install these things by default. If you commit to a car that's not yet delivered, you can negotiate to exclude these, or you can have them remove it (but they'll most likely have cut into the factory harness to install it, so the wiring harness has been modified, which is a negative IMHO).
Personally, I find these devices to be pretty terrible. I would be fine with flashing for high intensity braking, but the flashing is attention grabbing by design, and it's inappropriate in a lot of situations as it distracts from gathering awareness of the surroundings.
[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/interpretations/20288ztv
IIRC in the USA there are features allowed to be installed aftermarket that aren't legal to be installed as a dealer option (like front side-window tinting)
No one cares, not all states have mandatory inspections, and many inspectors just check if the brake light comes on when they press the brake pedal which would not reveal such an aftermarket device.
The only way to catch something like this would be a road driving test by the inspector, and even here in Europe this is not required.
As you may be aware, the US is a confederation of states. The type of light that flashes several times at the initiation of braking is specifically authorized by the California Vehicle Code, and perhaps in other states.
Do you have a reference as to where it's allowed in the CVC? FMVSS section 108 table I-c specifies this for the stop light:
Steady burning. Must be activated upon application of the service brakes. When optically combined with a turn signal lamp, the circuit must be such that the stop signal cannot be activated if the turn signal lamp is flashing. May also be activated by a device designed to retard the motion of the vehicle.
California Code, Vehicle Code - VEH § 25251.5
(a) Any motor vehicle may also be equipped with a system in which an amber light is center mounted on the rear of a vehicle to communicate a component of deceleration of the vehicle, and which light pulses in a controlled fashion at a rate which varies exponentially with a component of deceleration.
(b) Any motor vehicle may be equipped with two amber lamps on the rear of the vehicle which operate simultaneously with not more than four flashes within four seconds after the accelerator pedal is in the deceleration position and which are not lighted at any other time. The lamps shall be mounted at the same height, with one lamp located on each side of the vertical centerline of the vehicle, not higher than the bottom of the rear window, or if the vehicle has no rear window, not higher than 60 inches. The light output from each of the lamps shall not exceed 200 candlepower at any angle horizontal or above. The amber lamps may be used either separately or in combination with another lamp.
(c) Any stoplamp or supplemental stoplamp required or permitted by Section 24603 may be equipped so as to flash not more than four times within the first four seconds after actuation by application of the brakes.
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-sect-25251-5/
Thanks, TIL!
Thank you all for your questions and support, since this is blowing up a bit, I have a discount 'HN30' 30% off, if anyone is interested
TBH, I'm surprised this isn't already common. It is very similar to what EVs do, due to the relatively high regenerative braking.
You'd only see it on newer bikes with ABS, they seem likely to have more sensors and "electronics" in the brake system. In that kind of system the deceleration could be inferred from existing speed signals. I wouldn't be surprised if ABS systems already estimate the engine braking torque directly.
What is the general consensus on ABS braking in motorcycles? Really curious to hear from anyone who has rode a bike equipped with it.
For some reason the idea of a bike interfering with brake controls seems like it could feel unsafe if the system isn't designed really well. Extremely low margin for error when it comes to braking on a 2 wheel vehicle especially in suboptimal conditions.
I could see ABS braking being fine for the back tire, but the idea of automatic braking on the front tire would scare me.
There's a great FortNine video showing the pros and cons. The very short of it is that the perfect rider can stop faster without ABS but ABS + good technique can achieve very similar results while drastically reducing the consequences of panic braking.
This isn't mentioned in the video, but ABS also enables more aggressive use of linked brake systems, which also improve worst-case safety when a rider panics and uses only one brake or the wrong brake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDbWZiaUeDY
Front brake is where it's most beneficial as the front wheel is what keeps the bike upright. If you lock the front wheel, especially in a turn, the bike falls over almost instantly.
edit: Rear wheel locking gives a bit more time to react.
Personally the main safety benefit is for emergency braking in wet conditions. ABS also allows to use full brakes in the wet without worrying so much about falling over. That's the real benefit, real-world it shortens your stopping distance because of that increased confidence in using the brake.
Yes, as I understand it ABS catches the occasion where your braking overwhelms the wheel-road friction the wheel locks and starts to skid. If you're before that threshold then it doesn't activate and doesn't negatively affect anything, if you do lock then ABS activating is better than not having it and the remedy is the same as without ABS where you release the brake enough for the wheel to turn again. A skid is the least desirable in terms of control and stopping distance, having ABS lets a driver hit the brakes hard in an emergency with more confidence.
> ABS also allows to use full brakes in the wet without worrying so much about falling over. That's the real benefit, real-world it shortens your stopping distance because of that increased confidence in using the brake.
I think this point is worth emphasizing. You'll hear from a lot of folks on motorcycle forums that ABS will increase stopping distance. Which is true for great drivers performing threshold braking. How many motorcycle riders actually practice front braking on their non ABS bike until they lock up the front wheel to really learn the limits of themselves and their bike? For most people, you'll be able to use more brakes and stop in a shorter distance in more conditions with ABS while maintaining control of the vehicle.
I'd consider myself a pretty good rider but I've caught myself once or twice jamming on the brakes when a chaotic accident unfolds in front of me and the lizard brain takes over. I live in LA so lots of traffic and lots of accidents are common and any technology that helps my lizard brain keep me alive in a positive in my book.
I recently crashed cornering during a light mist and now I'm on the looking for anything that helps lean slippage. I know you can't fix stupid but still hoping something is out there. My old and busted vstrom needs an upgrade.
There's no such thing as "consensus" in any hobby, but the general trends are:
1. ABS on motorbikes has been proven to prevent lock-ups and therefore accidents, especially among newer riders who are more likely to grab all the brakes in situations where modulation of brake application is required to prevent an accident.
2. Traditionalists say that ABS keeps new riders from having to learn to correctly modulate the brakes and thus keeps them reliant on ABS forever, and that experienced riders can stop quicker without ABS. (The last point is technically true but it requires a highly-skilled rider and a certain set of conditions.)
ABS is bikes IS typically designed very well. (Although I have to take the Internet's word for it since my bike is a 1979 GS850G.)
>I could see ABS braking being fine for the back tire, but the idea of automatic braking on the front tire would scare me.
Just to be clear, Anti-Lock Braking (ABS) is different than Automated Emergency Braking (AEB).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_emergency_braking_sy...
Most, if not all, modern motorcycles already come with ABS braking. For many motorcycles it's also adjustable, for example switching off ABS in the rear while retaining it in the front, for those riding offroad and dirt.
Many bikes also come with cornering ABS, meaning that if the motorcycle is at an angle, the ABS comes in gradually.
Overall ABS is pretty much a "solved" problem right now, on motorcycles 2012+ at the very least. Earlier ABS wasn't that great. I had a BMW F800GS in 2010 and the ABS was horrible on bumpy roads. You basically had no braking if it kicked in.
If you're in Australia where it is mandated, sure. In most of the world, no motorcycles have ABS
It is mandatory in many countries, not just Australia. Europe, Japan, Brazil, etc, all require ABS on new motorcyles.
"Europe" is not and never has been a country to my knowledge.
Would you prefer to read a full list of EU member countries instead? As well as Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, ABS is also required in the UK.
...but it has mostly harmonized road rules, eg in relation to the ABS on the bigger bikes.
I'm in South Africa, and most of the popular brands have ABS by default, including top sellers like BMW R1300GS, Honda Africa Twin, KTM 890. This is big adventure country, like Australia. I think the superbikes also have ABS now since about 10 years ago.
ABS on a motorcycle is pretty great on the roadways. The issue I've heard from people is that it can't be disabled off road on many motorcycles. Most owners just unplugged the sensors entirely as a result, causing the system to indicate failure.
I'm very happy with my ABS (2023 F850 GS), especially since its "aggressiveness" depends on the riding mode.
Obviously it's tilt- and acceleration-aware, so I'm confide it's safe.
It works very well.
It’s not automatic braking. It’s automatically letting off the brakes for a fraction of a second to prevent locking up, aka anti-lock braking system
If it does kick in you get a slight pulsing on the leaver which means unless you are emergency braking, back off.
As far as the front goes, you never want the front to lock as you are almost certainly going down.
For off-road abs modes normally they turn rear off completely so you can deliberately lock it and decrease the sensitivity on the front but still keep the abs on for the front.
Im surprised new cars dont just go off of a gyro decel reading, don't modern cars already have a gyro?
An accelerometer would be a far better sensor than a gyro here. (You want to measure linear acceleration not angular velocity.)
Ooooh what a title
In 2019 I was a bicycling a lot, and really wanted to get something with a motor, so I could be a bit faster/farther/not so sweaty with my trips. I had access to a car but rarely used it.
I really don't like many inherent safety issues with motorcycles and never seriously considered obtaining one, but kept wanting a two-wheeled vehicle with a motor.
I'd ridden a 50cc scooter in 2019 for a few days, and it was fine then, but I never considered one seriously since.
Eventually, in 2020 it was an emergency room doctor who suggested I look at 'real scooters' instead of the 50cc things.
So I did, eventually I ended up owning a 170cc scooter/moped thing, and it feels infinitely safer than a motorcycle, and a bicycle. I've done 20,000 miles on scooters since then, probably, all over the world,
including Denver to Canada and back once.
Cheaper lighter more efficient, than motorcycles. more stable, lower center of mass, better wind protection, useful storage options, too, compared to motorcycles and bicycles.
I ride mine year round, no issues.
I wrote a page trying to capture some of the upsides, but it's hard to get the tone right on the internet:
https://josh.works/scootering
> Scooters are vastly safer than motorcycles
Why make such a definitive claim with zero evidence to back it up?
The justifications in that section are nonsense and seem to boil down to a skill issue on your part.
Sure, around the city a scooter makes sense for a lot of people, though I believe they provide a false sense of security. The lower barrier to entry also lowers the "perceived" risk.
Feeling safer !== safer
Personally, I feel much safer on one of my motorcycles than a scooter. But that's because I am extremely comfortable on a motorcycle and can make it do exactly what I want, when I want.
Any marginal safety benefit you're getting from riding a scooter is being completely erased by the disregard for basic road safety principles shown in the footage.
Scooters are great in the city, but they are kinda boring when it comes to touring or hitting the twisties. My dad's 200cc Vespa is just about interesting enough to ride on hills, but anything below that is just yawn.
I wondered once if it would be possible to ride a motorcycle safely if I drove carefully (everyone I know who rides has been in at least one serious accident).
I thought: I could look at the data, but I see so many motorcyclists driving dangerously that the data wouldn't teach me much.
So then I thought: I bet if I look at the accident rate for women riders it would be interesting.
I found that in the UK, male riders have seven times the accident rate of female riders.
So I guess how you ride does make a huge difference.
Age is another differentiator. Take young men out of the equation and you get a much better picture.
Another interesting stat is that the majority of motorcycle crashes are single vehicle accidents, ie. the rider going down by themselves. While this can be equipment failure, in most cases this will be crashing due to riding too fast or above skill level.
So yes, riding very carefully at safe speeds and avoiding dangerous situations (I choose my routes to avoid situations where drivers are likely to be in their phone — mostly freeways and freeway-like streets in cities) will make bikes a lot more safe.
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This sadly does not say anything because the kilometers driven is unknown in this statistic, right? So it could be that female drivers do not drive that many kilometers compared to males, which results in less accidents.
Also, is this accidents total men / women? Then it would not even take into account, that there are significant more male riders.
GP didn't specify, but IIRC vehicle incident rates are usually specified in terms of distance driven/ridden, so the stats they were looking at may have already taken that into account.
In my experience the number of female riders is so small, that from a statistical point of view it becomes almost irrelevant.
Women also tend to ride smaller bikes, for obvious reasons.
It was deaths/km ridden.
That’s the worst stat. By trip would be much better.
Motorcyclists on average ride less than 3,000 miles a year, cars are 4-6x that. 90% of accidents are within 10 miles of the riders home.
There are so many ways to die on a motorcycle that are outside of your control. Someone could not be paying attention, make a mistake, not see you, be drunk, etc.
I knew someone at a previous company that was here one day then gone the next due to a non-highway accident caused by someone else IIRC.
It's sort of like being friends with someone who plays low-chance russian roulette for fun in their free time.
I've been a motorcyclist for over 30 years.
I pretty much live by this:
“If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you've already blown it.” ― Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
Engine braking with an internal combustion engine generates a vacuum in the intake manifold, because the throttle is closed while the pistons suck air.
(Performance cars sometimes have vacuum gauges to measure this. Aftermarket ones can be installed.)
A brake light could be rigged to activate past a certain a vacuum threshold. (There would be some false positives that are possibly not worth caring about.)
For all the engineering described in the article, I'm surprised it doesn't mention this possibility, if only to give reasons why it was discarded. (Maybe it's a bad solution; I have no ide!)
It seems that a vacuum-driven brake light could possibly have an advantage of kicking in faster than a motion detector, because it could trigger as soon as the revs are dropping with the throttle closed, before the clutch engages to actually connect the engine braking to the wheel.
I.e. blip-throttle before downshift -> vacuum kicking in / light comes on -> downshift completes, actual braking begins.
My motorcycle pet peeve is that if you ride bicycles routinely the control differences between bikes and motorcycles become potentially dangerous, especially while riding the motorcycle. I'm not sure how to align their controls more, but if your bike has a rotary handle shifter and one day on the motorcycle you "shift" with the throttle, it's not going to go well. There are a number of other possible control goofs you can do that aren't great.
I ride both regularly and I don't really have a problem switching between them. For me, the overall experience is so entirely different between the two, that my brain knows to treat them differently. Just like people who own riding lawn mowers don't really have difficulties driving their car afterward.
(Blipping the throttle accidentally should never cause an emergency unless other things are already going wrong: for example, if you are riding a bike whose power is way beyond your skill level or you are following someone too closely.)
> Just like people who own riding lawn mowers don't really have difficulties driving their car afterward.
My riding mower is tank-steer (zero turn)... pretty hard to use those skills on a car. But steering wheels basically work the same on all the equipment I've got with those; some easier to turn than others depending on geometry and power assist. The pedals are more likely to be different --- the mower has a friction lever on a panel to set the throttle / engine speed and levers you hold to go forward and back on right and left (so this does steering too); the tractor has similar throttle level, and then a pedal that you rotate to go forward or back with both wheels (all wheels if you put it into 4x4) and it has a splitable brake pedal if you want to brake on one side or the other.
But yeah; none of that makes it hard to go back and drive a car. Other than sometimes it'd be nice to do some tight turns at the expense of my tires if I could control each side individually.
1991, first time riding a motorcycle... After a 15 minutes instruction course near the barn from which we extracted the 200 cm³ bike, off we were in Idaho's mountains. As a 15 years-old French person, the whole experience was exhilarating and it wasn't long before I started to relax and open the throttle a bit on the dirt track...
As an avid mountain bike cyclist back in France, I hung to what seemed familiar - which worked well enough until the first sharp bend came... It came way too fast, I panicked, cycling reflexes took over, I shifted my weight back and pressed both handle levers hard - getting the (to a cyclist) very unexpected result of both disengaging the clutch and thus losing all engine braking while locking the front wheel hard (why did they put the front break where the rear, which helps me control slides, is supposed to be ?)... I was catapulted, followed by the bike... Nothing broken - just bruises, rashes and the flattened ego of a lucky idiot.
As a daily cyclist, being a motorcycle passenger on big engines always terrifies me: I'm on two wheels, with bicycle-like positions and trajectories... But everything happens monstrously too fast, my instincts for braking and acceleration are all out of calibration, so I always feel that we cannot possibly survive the next turn !
So, yes - I recommend not mixing bicycling and motorcycling.
I regularly swap between a scooter and motorcycle, owning both.
The big difference being left hand leaver on a motorcycle is the clutch, rear brake is right foot, on a scooter, no clutch so the left hand leaver is the rear break.
When I first got the scooter I was expecting the obvious accidental muscle memory confusion with the left leaver when swapping vehicles. For some reason it just never happened, never accidentally gone for the clutch on the scooter and never accidentally gone for the rear brake on the bike.
Another problem is that on most bycicles right leaver is the REAR brake, while on motoryclces it FRONT. It make difference when braking in turns. I was actually considering swapping my bike brakes left to right but it turns out one of the cables is too short. :(
US bicycles, that is. In the UK the bicycle brakes are the other way around.
The UK and Us drive on different sides of the roads and are taught to user different arms for signals as a result. If I'm going to turn I need to both slow down by using the brakes and signal to others. thus I want the rear brakes (even thought front can stop faster I don't want to risk losing traction on that wheel in traffic)
It's a matter of preference - I'm in the UK and I have my brakes the Euro way, front on the left. With most brakes swapping around is trivial.
I standardize all my two wheeled vehicles to the motorcycle layout for this reason. It bothers my push bike friends to an amusing degree but it's much safer for me. Plus I feel I have greater control of the critical front brake with my most dextrous and strong hand.
I believe these would be illegal in Ontario.
The section 62 of the Highway Traffic Act says this:
> Intermittent red light restricted
> (14) Subject to subsections (14.1), (15) and (17.1), no person shall use a lamp, other than turning signal lamps or the vehicular hazard warning signal lamps commonly known as four way flashers, that produces intermittent flashes of red light.
There is an exemption for bicycles but not motorcycles.
Shame on the author. I clicked the "cats" link in the header only to find out it's short for categories. Boo.
Your site really needs a video :) I've run Hyperlites on my bikes forever (https://hyperlites.com/). I like them as they don't interfere with the original brake light, and provide additional lights higher up on the bike.
If only somebody would make motorcycles less noisy.. I dream of the day where there are neither mosquitos nor motorcycle noise. Two most annoying things during the summer.
Current electric motorcycles can already be pretty silent, to the detriment of pedestrians. Some have added artificial noises because of this, like ones already used in cars.
Factory motorcycles aren't that loud. Most of the ones you notice are modified.
Unfortunately for bystanders, but fortunately for drivers, noise is one of the strongest way for motorcycles to signal themselves to cars.
I like this! Have thought of it for both bikes and cars, I drive manual and occasionally just downchange coming up to lights or off motorways. Also used to have a zx636 and bought an LED brake light that flashed obnoxiously when triggered (F1 style), I like to think the safety it added offset how annoyed I was probably making everyone behind me.
I rode a Honda 350 for seven years starting with the Oil Crisis, before bike headlights even turned on automatically, although I kept mine lit. The biggest problem was other drivers not noticing me coming on or from the side, because compared to cars bikes were and still are rare on the road. They'd turn as I was passing their blind spot, or pull out in front of me from a cross street, etc. Seemed like I'd have a close call about once per week, but I don't recall ever having a threat of being hit from behind.
I unsuccessfully built something like this for my bicycle a while back: https://niels-ole.com/bike/maker/2020/02/20/bicycle-light
> It turned out that when I accelerate strongly, I pull the bike back, at some point in the rotation of the pedals. This is rightfully detected as a sudden deceleration of the bicycle.
I guess on a much heavier motorcycle the deceleration of the motorcycle is actually a meaningful indicator of the combination driver+motorcycle slowing down.
Busch und Müller has some products with brake lights
https://www.bumm.de/en/products/dynamo-rucklichter/produkt/3...?
https://www.bumm.de/en/products/e-bike-r%C3%BCcklichter/pare...?
Good example how to push forward and do the thing.
Otherwise, is it me or the info on the product page is a bit dry. No size specs, no instructions, not enough pics. It is like the last step to convert is not fully complete yet.
One of the issues usually is to make sure the part is compatible with the bike as otherwise you need to spend money to get it and then “try it”. The suggestion with tge pictures how to put it would be useful as well.
Great idea. I thought about this when I rented an electric Renault car, and found that in regenerative braking mode… brake lights do not come on when lifting the foot off the accelerator. A friend in a car behind said he found it confusing and wondered what I was doing. Such a bizarre design flaw not to have brake lights come on when this happens.
the biggest way to make a motorcycle safer, IMO, is remove the need for shifting.
Lower the center of gravity, reduce the weight, increase the wind protection, make the riding stance really comfortable.
Make it easily accommodate a backpack, or a passenger, or both.
And you have a scooter!
They're unconventional in the greater usa, but wildly fun.
Generally, it seems like one can entertain the best parts of a bicycle, feet, and a car, and a motorcycle, all in one.
I wrote a bit of an ode to scooters, here: https://josh.works/scootering
I wish more of my friends rode scooters!
https://josh.works/scootering
I've always felt safer in motorcycles compared to scooters. Something about the handling in scooters doesn't feel reassuring. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's more apparent when you ride on patchy, broken roads. It's much easier riding over bumps, zigzagging to avoid potholes on a motorcycle. Of course, I'm comparing motorcycles and scooters of similar weight. Riding a litre class machine is a different dimension altogether.
> “Moreover, during intense braking scenarios, it flashes proportionately to the braking intensity.”
In Europe, a lot of modern cars have a similar feature. When braking particular hard (eg: a sudden emergency stop from highway speeds) the brake lights will flash rapidly to warn drivers behind you. It’s a very good safety feature, IMO. But not legal in North America?
I had that on my Suburban in Texas. Not sure where it is illegal, but my car had that as a dealer option.
I agree, but the device has built in switch, if you mount it upside down, it won't flash
"BMW’s dynamic brake light, for example, flashes during emergency braking to alert trailing drivers, greatly enhancing road safety."
This isn't obvious to someone who has no idea. I just assumed it's an aftermarket adjustment for people that like flashy vehicles.
I don't think that matters, isn't the point just that it's more eye-catching than a solid (and much smaller than a car's) light?
Any driver should know what a brake light means, I don't think that it's an intentional flash feature is important to know.
I don't think you can have it both ways, either all lights are the same OR one is more important and drivers will all think first "is it this or that light? do I hit the brakes? maybe this means he is stopping slowly so I will risk my rear end for no reason?" before they act. I'm sure it isn't going to backfire
Many of them flashy lights are just flashy. Some underregulated regions you'll quickly get tired of every car being like a christmas tree trying to one up each other what patterns their stop or turning lights do or how bright they are (and for front lights just how bright they are and how many).
This makes it an arms race because the average driver loses sensitivity and then what used to be enough is now too subdued and unsafe (even if technically enough by law). Reminds me of how some regions require ad breaks to have audio not louder than the main production, while others are just straight up loudness wars on your ears
There's something to be said for setting a standard and keeping driving competence high and being less annoying to others including pedestrians.
(A bike is a slightly different story, it's harder to see how far away is a solo light. But then this is also a culture where half the riders believe that deafening bystanders is important for safety so sometimes hard to sympathize)
This was a great read — love how it blends real-world frustration with a builder’s mindset.
The insight about how little attention goes into motorcycle specific safety tech is spot on. The market tends to over-index on cars, but the stakes for motorcyclists are arguably higher per mile. Would love to see more open source or modular frameworks emerge in this space something others could build on top of, regionally or by use-case.
Curious if you explored anything around passive detection (weather, terrain, phone telemetry) or if most of your work focused on rider input and behavior?
Where's the quest to make motorcycles a huge bit quieter? I am so fed up with all the loud motorcycles in my city. Seems pretty arrogant of people with loud vehicles to think that we all want to hear them.
This is an old problem that was solved and not solved. Most motorcycles in the past 25 years are decently quiet, unless you rev it up at night and everyone will hear it. But it is the same with the cars. At the same time, there is a significant number of motorcycles with non-street legal mufflers that add some decibels, you hear those even during the day at low revs.
I have 2 bikes, both stock exhaust, both quiet. The older one with the Euro 3 and larger engine is more quiet than the one that is Euro 5 and has a small engine, but none is loud enough to wake anyone at night if I come home at that time. At the same time, a couple of neighbors with fancy Akrapovic cans will wake up the entire street every time they pass by.
This is something I want for all of my street bikes. I roll off the throttle a fair bit before grabbing the brakes on my Ruckus and way earlier on my modified Metropolitan. Always watching the mirrors while doing so. And my 1966 Sears ( made by Gilera ) only has a brake light switch on the rear brake pedal. I'm so conditioned to use the front brakes on a motorcycle that I often forget to tap the rear brake to signal other drivers. I'll be ordering 3 myself if they ship to the US, or getting my buddy in the UK to snag them for me.
I do very similar things manually already. I engine break and apply very light rear break pressure to trigger my break lights, and let off the rear break and reapply it for the “flashing” effect. Once at a complete stop and in neutral I flash my break lights off/on until the car behind me is at a complete stop.
The benefit of this is tool is that it reduces cognitive load while also working in emergency situations where I’m more focused on operating the motorcycle than signaling to others.
I sold my bike and gave up riding because it was just too dangerous. It's not just that people don't see you, they're not even looking anymore, they're on their phones.
We need an app that turns off drivers' phones when they are within 100m of a motorcyclist.
It's a nice story. Some statistics might help motivate concern. E.g., The disproportionate risk per mile for motorcycling is chilling. But in California "rear end" as a category appears to be only about 15% of all MC accidents, and even then the category doesn't distinguish being hit from hitting.
I suspect a lot of the effort here is marketing, so you might extract extra value (and do more good) with a complementary product.
A big benefit might come from controllable red light and warning bell for the rider when you're more than 15% over speed limit. Speed is the biggest risk by far, and also the risk you can control (since no brake light can defend against the inattentive driver). It's way too easy to not realize how fast you're going.
Indeed, for that you could also factor in stopping distances. Starting out with lighter, nimble bikes, I got in real trouble with the 650+ lb monsters that dither about stopping. Those would get a lower threshold. And you'd apply a higher threshold for open road vs. traffic, etc.
Then build out a UI workflow and logging, and it might grow into an interesting intelligent copilot product line addressing all the pilot-controllable factors. As a motorcyclist, it's really on you to save your own bacon.
Out of curiosity, wouldn't an accelerometer alone not work for this purpose? I see you've hooked it up with engine RPM as well, but realistically you want to indicate when you're slowing down, no matter the reason, right? Is there something I'm fundamentally missing here?
This is a great idea though, and definitely something that more bikes should come stock with. There's a very clear benefit for safety.
Thank you for your question, it does not hook with the engine RPM, but I did have an issue with the sample rate syncing with the engine rpm therefore picking up noise, I solved that issue with randomizing the sample interval with pseudo random numbers.
You should also soft-mount the accelerometer to minimize vibration transmission.
Ah okay, I thought I must be missing something. Cool product, I hope it does well.
I use https://www.neutrinoblackbox.com/ for same with great success. I tapped my brake line electronics and the app lets me set up the sensitivity for when decelerating brightens them up. Also a lot of other fun features you can read about on their site.
The issue with brake lights is they are binary on/off. It would likely be better if the brightness would vary by how hard the braking is. Like getting brighter and brighter and then rapidly flashing.
Brightness would be hard to discern in the sun. Cars have center stop light strip, it would be cool if amount of illuminated segments would be proportional to deceleration. Probably not legal though.
> Brightness would be hard to discern in the sun
Nothing is perfect.
Every car would have to have the same brightness for their brake lights for this to work well. At night, cars in the US have their brake lights partially illuminated as running lights. On some cars these are so bright that it looks like they're actively braking.
If the binary isn’t working then you are following too close and no method is truly safe
> If the binary isn’t working then you are following too close
There isn't always have a choice. If you open a gap in traffic, another car will simply change lanes into it.
> no method is truly safe
That's not a reason for not making things safer.
That's actually brilliant. Same issue w/ some sports cars too or even cars coasting in slow stop and go traffic when coming up from behind from high speed traffic.
This would be a fantastic standard feature for aftermarket tail lights - which used to be nigh-obligatory because OEMs still hadn't adopted LEDs.
Throttle position sensor would be another data source, but model-specific.
same as with cars - it seems the technology that is actually built in the products is just the annoying / useless ones instead of technology that would be actually useful e.g. to safety
I crashed recently after someone in front applied break too hard and too late. Couldn’t walk for two weeks—something like BrakeBright would’ve been a gamechanger. How do you prevent false triggers on bumpy roads though?
"Committed to empowering users, I developed a subsequent version incorporating a USB port. Currently, I’m finalizing user-friendly software utilities, enabling riders to easily update BrakeBright firmware, customize features, and personalize the system to match individual riding styles and preferences."
A brake light that requires system administration?
This would also be useful on my 2-door Civic.
I was only thinking about bikes, but I lift/downshift in my BRZ all the time. I guess there is much less fear of being mangled by a cel phone user when I'm in the car. Looks like I will be ordering 4 of these.
indeed
A legal mandate should be made to require this on all motorbikes.
Really nice project.
If you are thinking commercial you may want to look into IP issues to see if there are active patents (probably expired by now?)
As far as design choices, based on my journeys in similar types of projects: (just my$.02, not a critique)
USB will be a significant point of failure. The connector has voltage present and electrochemical activity will destroy the connector over time unless you can keep it in a clean, low humidity environment. Consider a different connector or a wireless SOC to eliminate this point of failure and make a completely potted unit possible. If you use usb, make sure there is no voltage normally present, even from the data connections, and you have a good watertight plug for the access port. Everything gets wet on bikes. Everything. nRF52840 or ESP32C3 would be my go to choices here, but there are a lot of excellent candidates. BLE is probably the protocol you will want to use. This will facilitate making a simple app to do firmware updates and feature adjustments.
Consider eliminating the need for RPM input. This will be a significant point of failure and your greatest installation headache across different motorcycles.
As a failsafe, control the lamp output pass-through with a pulled-up mosfet of at least 50a capacity (you won’t ever see this high current, but it protects from bulb changing short circuits and other unknowns)
An Infineon BTS5016-2EKA or its low side equivalent is probably a great choice, and gives you both of the switches you need in one package, for less than $3, with full protection features. ( I assume you will need one to interrupt existing signaling and one to light where’s there is no activation from the brake switches)
The main thing is the lamp must light with regular inputs even if the circuit loses power or the chip gets a hole drilled in it. If it comes on when it shouldn’t, that is also bad, but not as bad.
Idk what sensor you are using, but consider the icm20948, it’s not too expensive ($3-4) and it has onboard sensor fusion. Only downside is it’s 1.8v, but if you use the nRf52840 that’s not an issue. Even so, level conversion isn’t too big a deal. Sensor fusion will greatly simplify understanding what’s going on.
Since power consumption is not critical I would consider using an ML algorithm on the sensor data to detect hazard conditions, lie downs, etc and filter out steep uphill/downhill false activation/failure to activate.
You could collect the data easily and train a simple model with off the shelf tools designed specifically for doing that kind of thing with MCUs. I forget the name but it’s commonly used for voice action or gesture training. You might want to train on a few bikes though, especially ones with different vibration frequencies.
Now you can add a subscription model for premium flashing features and “enhanced AI” with in-app GPT4 access to an interactive tour guide and a “best rides” feature customized to your riding style and search history! Business could pay-to play, and insurance companies, motorcycle manufacturers, and tire sellers would love that personally identifiable riding data! (Please, don’t)
It's not the first per say. https://admorelighting.com/
Their owners manual for their braking light bar lists Patent # 10,363,865, but I don't know if this applies 1 to 1.
I ride motorcyles so found this quite interesting.
Instead of a motion sensor, why not simply turn on the brakes whenever you down shift and leave it on until the throttle is engaged?
That requires you to have a bike where the current gear is recognized digitally and the bike has a standard way of getting that data to an external device (or it requires you to put a sensor on the gear lever). For that matter, it requires you to have a bike with a manual transmission. There's lots of electric bikes, bikes with fully automatic transmissions, and bikes that simply don't have the electronics (not to mention a standard way to interface with them).
Actually in thinking about it, if you had access (digitally) to the current gear, you probably also have tachometer and velocity data as well through whatever that connection is anyway.
On the other hand, a motion sensor works for all bikes and is quite robust.
You can infer the gear based on vehicle speed and engine speed.
That's how gear indications work on most manual cars too: there's no actual sensor telling what gear is selected (other than reverse, and sometimes clutch pedal and neutral).
> You can infer the gear based on vehicle speed and engine speed.
Wouldn't that be highly variable based on the vehicle itself? Especially considering personal modifications tend to be common for motorbikes.
Yes, but you could calibrate it once manually.
> Especially considering personal modifications tend to be common for motorbikes.
Including gearbox? The only thing relevant for the functionality would be the transmission ratio for each gear.
People often change sprockets which changes the final drive ratio.
Yes that makes it harder to make a general system. It could have a "learning" function to pick this up though.
If you have vehicle speed and engine speed you simply don't need to know the gear to know when engine braking is happening.
An existing brake light product, the Billy light from Clearwater, integrates with the BMW canbus to pull the bike's acceleration data and use that as a basis for what this light appears to do.
I can imagine there's enough of a market for BMW accessories that they can make it work, but if you want to address other bikes with the same device, you need a different approach.
Agreed, I was more responding to the idea of tying into existing sensors or motorcycle data as noted above. The light I mentioned is part of a bigger lighting system that works through a CAN interface and has all kinds of control of settings through a somewhat convoluted overlay on existing bike inputs, like press this switch, then these, then turn the wonder wheel to adjust brightness.
I don't think that would work in cases where rev-matching is used.
20 years riding bikes and I never knew I have this problem. Even now I don't have it. It sounds like a nice gimmick but not a solution to a real problem, at least not for European traffic where bikes are reasonably fine and where the top cause of motorcycle fatalities is riding way too fast.
EV’s need this too! I’m noticing my Tesla isn’t doing a great job turning on the brake lights during one pedal driving. It seems to need pretty hard deceleration before they come on.
I actually think it is lame when engine braking activates the brake light. There are two distinct behaviors: slowing down gently, with engine braking, and slowing down intensely with physical brake application. When I am engine braking like going down a long hill I do not want to flag the drivers behind me that I am braking ... I just want to use the compression of the engine to regulate my speed. Anyone who lives in a mountainous area will tell you this. Seeing solid brake lights going down the hill is a red flag / skill issue. Some manufacturers have begun to add artificial brake lights during engine braking though and I find it disingenuous.
I’m trying to understand this comment - are you saying that there’s an advantage to drivers behind you not thinking you’re braking? As in - you don’t want them to think you’re coming to a complete stop when you’re regulating your speed?
Or are you saying that you don’t want them to think you have a skill issue ?
I live in a semi mountainous area, where people driving automatics ride their brakes most of the way down the mountains. (Relatively small mountains, elevations ranging from 1,900-2,700 with the surrounding area around 1,000-1,100 elevation. So not the same necessity of engine braking as somewhere out west where the elevation is 3-6k average with mountains up to 12-14k).
engine braking is not braking - is what I am trying to imply
holding your speed or decellerating mildly is not the same as braking. if i gear down into a higher rpm and hold my speed, or perhaps decel ever so slightly - its not worth alerting the driver behind you. most people over-react to brake lights and will see your brakes as "I should apply brakes too" when in this particularly case, they should not.
I can't think of a single circumstance where compression braking should cause a brake light to illuminate. the rate of decelleration is so small compared to even a gentle tap of the brakes, that it will merely confuse drivers behind you.
thanks for your comment, the device is self leveling, I live in a hilly Scotland, it keeps adjusting itself with the slopes and only reacts to sudden changes.
that is good. the rate of decel is more important than a strict boolean.
Agree and currently it's a dealbreaker to me, however I'm certain it will become optional in the future iterations.
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The only safe way - just don’t.