My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
1–10 of 390 posts
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#2I 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?
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#3This 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.
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#4I 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.
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#5same 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
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#6I 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 me…
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.
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#7I 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 me…
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).
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#8Out 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.
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#9This would also be useful on my 2-door Civic.
Re: My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer
#10TBH, I'm surprised this isn't already common. It is very similar to what EVs do, due to the relatively high regenerative braking.