Improving car drivers' perception of motorcycles: innovative headlight design as a short-term solution to mitigate accidents
Abstract
The most frequent motorcycle accidents involve another vehicle violating the motorcycle's right-of-way at an intersection. The low visual conspicuity of motorcycles (especially because of their small size) is the primary reason why motorcycles are often not detected or seen or too late. The main safety measure in the past has been the use of daytime running lights (DRLs) by motorcycles, which became compulsory in the seventies in many countries. This conspicuity advantage of motorcycles as the only vehicles with DRLs is presently getting lost by the growing use of DRLs by cars as well. In a first study we have shown that car DRLs are competing light patterns that create visual noise and decrease the detectability of motorcycles. In addition to detection errors, the misperception of the approaching motorcycle's speed and time-to-arrival also contributes to accident occurrence and severity. In order to reduce motorcycle accidents, and especially to improve motorcycle perceptibility (both detection and speed perception) by other vehicle drivers, ITS based on vehicle-to-vehicle communication will probably provide effective long-term solutions (>10 years). But until then, other solutions have to be found and could quite easily be implemented, by considering innovative headlight configurations for motorcycles. In two simulator studies, we tested various motorcycle headlight configurations, intended for remedying simultaneously the two perceptual errors made by other vehicle drivers. The impact of different headlight configurations (using colour coding and additional lights) was studied in the presence of visual distractors (car front lights: only LEDs, only dipped beams, LEDs and dipped beams) and in different illumination conditions (nighttime, dusk and daytime conditions). The results indicate that headlight configurations comprising additional yellow lights on the fork and on the motorcyclist's helmet significantly improve motorcycle perceptibility by other vehicle drivers. Furthermore, the simultaneous use of daytime running lights (LEDs) and dipped beams by cars, as frequently observed nowadays, has been shown to be particularly detrimental to motorcycle detectability.
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
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