Cycle safety technology revealed

22 January 2015

Jaguar Land Rover reveals its ‘Bike Sense’ research, which will tap the driver on the shoulder and ring a bicycle bell inside the car to help prevent accidents involving bicycles and motorbikes.

• With nearly 19,000 cyclists killed or injured on UK roads every year, Jaguar Land Rover researchers are identifying the best warning colours and sounds that will trigger an instinctive response from the driver to prevent accidents
• Door handles will ‘buzz’ the driver’s hand to prevent doors being opened into the path of bikes
• The accelerator pedal will vibrate if moving the car would cause an accident
• ‘Bike Sense’ is a concept technology that is being developed at Jaguar Land Rover’s Advanced Research Centre in the UK

Whitley, UK: Jaguar Land Rover is developing a range of new technologies that would use colours, sounds and touch inside the car to alert drivers to potential hazards and prevent accidents involving bicycles and motorbikes.
Sensors on the car will detect when another road user is approaching and identify it as bicycle or motorbike. Bike Sense will then make the driver aware of the potential hazard before the driver sees it.

But rather than using a generic warning icon or sound, which takes time for the driver’s brain to process, Bike Sense uses lights and sounds that the driver will instinctively associate with the potential danger.

To help the driver understand where the bike is in relation to their car, the audio system will make it sound as if a bicycle bell or motorbike horn is coming through the speaker nearest the bike, so the driver immediately understands the direction the cyclist is coming from.

If a bicycle or motorbike is coming up the road behind the car, Bike Sense will detect if it is overtaking or coming past the vehicle on the inside, and the top of the car seat will extend to ‘tap’ the driver on the left or right shoulder. The idea is that the driver will then instinctively look over that shoulder to identify the potential hazard.

As the cyclist gets closer to the car, a matrix of LED lights on the window sills, dashboard and windscreen pillars will glow amber and then red as the bike approaches. The movement of these red and amber lights across these surfaces will also highlight the direction the bike is taking.