Motorcycle Safety Features Coming From Honda
“Advanced Safety Vehicles” is the term Honda uses for its efforts to build vehicles with advanced safety features. I’ve written before about conspicuity enhancement, where designing motorcycles that appear to have angry human faces make them more noticeable to drivers. Now I’ve learned about some more of what Honda is working on.
I thought about paraphrasing what Honda says about “LONG design” but what the heck, I’ll just quote. I can’t say it any better than the did and I doubt they’ll come after me for cribbing their text, when what I’m doing is giving them some good publicity. So here are the pictures and the info. And here’s the link to the Honda site.
LONG Design
Since the light from a conventional motorcycle’s headlights comes only from the center of the vehicle, it is often difficult to judge a motorcycle’s distance and speedâ€â€often it seems to be farther away and moving more slowly than reality. To achieve nearly the same level of visibility as automobiles, ASV-3 motorcycles are outfitted with two sets of high-intensity LED lights at two different heights. This improves motorists’ ability to judge a motorcycle’s distance by approximately 10%, and improve the ability to assess its speed by approximately 20%, as compared with conventional motorcycles.
In addition to the placement of lights, Honda is also developing a camera system that shows what’s behind you on a screen on your bike’s dash. They call this their “Rear View Assistance System.” With cameras and screens constantly dropping in price, this is likely to be standard equipment before we know it.
Keep the good ideas flowing guys.
Recent from National Motorcycle Examiner
Bikers and their love affair with chrome
Biker Quote for Today
Anything that was sort of ahead of its time, in its time, that’s what I like.–Jay Leno
Tags: Advanced Safety Vehicles
December 14th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Where did you get your info from?
December 14th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Just follow the links in the story.
December 14th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
I think the camera system will be badass. But that top light, seems like it offset the bikes balance. Either way I’m sure Honda is on the right path. Thanks for the response Ken.