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Heads-Up Displays for Motorcyclists
An anonymous reader writes "An NYT article describes a new invention by a former racing driver to incorporate displays in the visors of helmets used by motorcyclists. A GPS receiver in the helmet is used to calculate position and speed of the wearer, and presumably in displaying route guidance. I'll bet some horrifying data could be gathered on the speed with which riders' heads impact the pavement after an accident."
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Hurm, Detecting attempt of the cloaked url vulnerability in IE, luckily it doesn't work.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
i always wanted that bike and helmet
If inventors want to take tips from arnold schwarzenegger movies, couldn't they invent something useful like killer cyborgs instead?
Motion Research - SportVue
Quite the morbid commentary posted beside the article there, but the Chevy Corvette Z06 already possesses HUD-capabilities - speed, current gear, etc. Helmets would be a nice next step, but incorporating it into more cars would be nicer.
If you read the article (and look at the pretty pictures), you can see that it is indeed integrated into the helmet itself and not just strapped onto the outside.
Perhaps a button on the handlebars to toggle the HUD in the helmet would be appropriate. It would allow the rider to get the information when he wants it, but not be distracting all the time. It would definitely be an improvement over looking down at a gauge cluster, I would think.
If you've ever driven a car and instead of focusing on the road in front of you, tried looking at the windsheild, you'd realize just how hard it is to change focus quickly from the glass to the road. Now try driving with glasses on and focusing on the lenses of your glasses, while staying in your lane.
Further, when I go riding I spend most of the time with my visor up, to feel the wind on my face and enjoy the ride. Why would I want to keep my visor down, just so that it can tell me I'm speeding when I already know?
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Yes it is.
If, for example the speedometer and engine warning lights were in the HUD then the rider wouldn't have to take her eyes off the road to check them. Think about it for a second. The fighter pilots use it succesfully and damn if they don't have more things in their mind than motorcyclists.
The difference to the interior light reflection is that the reflection is on the wind screen but the HUD looks like it was outside the car closer to the objects the rider already looks at. It's "advanced enough" to me so someone else has to explain how exactly it is done.
Antti S. Brax - Old school - http://www.iki.fi/asb/
I would say more, since (1) GPS speed, in my experience, is very accurate, and (2) because motorcycle speedometers are notoriously inaccurate.
Finkployd
Actually the most common danger to motorcyclists is alcohol. The majority of bike accidents do not involve cars, read the Hurt Report.
Don't get me wrong, moron cagers are a danger, but this whole 'down a few beers and ride into the sunset' thing my fellow bikers have such a fixation with has to stop.
Finkployd
a bit of consideration for others please, that sentence didnt need to be so graphic. i lost my father on a bike because of a guy in a 4wd who couldnt drive.
I take it from your post that you have never had a deer, or a pedestrian, let alone a car wander out into your peripheral vision, with obvious intention to wander some more.
I've been on a Yahaha 650XS Heritage Special for the last 11 years; thanks for asking.
I have been in situations where a glance down at my instruments is inopportune. It has never caused an accident because I do it quickly and my eyes are back on the road. FYI I also check my side mirrors when I change lanes or turn, and in that moment my eye is also not on the road ahead.
Maybe you've been riding for 20 years. Don't know; don't care. This is not a pissing contest. In my view, having something extra in my field of view that has no relation to the background I'm constantly scanning does more harm than good. I know the approximate RPM of the bike from its feel and sound. I've never gotten so crazy on it that I'm surprised by my speed when I check it. What exactly could you put on that HUD that would offset the additional risk, pray tell?
The cool factor does not cut it. Maybe on four wheels.
... ... WTF?
:)
First time for everything. Like to think I'd do the same. Cheers.
Yeah, had the deer. My dad in the truck behind me says it looked like the doe jumped right over me, but what happened in fact was she bounded out and we eyeballed each other for just a moment before she decided to veer just behind me in a leap. Kind of slo-mo beautiful, in that I'm-about-to-die kinda way.
I like the jackpot idea. I still wear all the gear (in 30-40 Celcius heat) and try to keep people guessing on the road, though the cars around me probably find it annoying and don't know why.
Momentum is conserved, specifically:
(copy into OO.o for pretty print, btw)
p_i = p_f newline
m_i v_i = m_f v_f
Since m_f is much smaller than m_i, it follows that v_f must be much larger than v_i. That is, that the cyclist goes much faster than the cycle.
#define DRM chmod 000
I've had some experience with Motorcycles (12 years of riding), and some with HUDs (99 Corvette has an excellent HUD on the windshield). The placement of the the HUD in this article is at the top/center of the helmet visor. Assuming you're not tucked behind the windshield of a sportbike (in which case you would be looking thru the top center of your visor) this is both out of the way of any useful "peripheral data" (with the possible exception of Highway Patrol aircraft) and more quickly acquired than the instrument cluster. I'm not disagreeing with your comment about a windshield mounted display, I just don't forsee a safety/distraction issue.
Nissan has this back in the 240SX (S13). It was one of those late 80s early 90s toys. I've never seen on work, but it basically had an LED on the dash and a semitransparent reflective coating in the bottom left corner of the windshield. They tended to burn out after a while.
Tim Smith - Ramblings from Nerd Land
No, since the asphalt would be expected to be about parallel to the trajectory of the cyclist, so that would be an upper bound for the speed at which the had scaps along the road. Additionally, GPSRs are notoriously bad at calculating vertical speeds, and they sample only roughly every second, so there's not much to be learned in this regard. One would need acceleration sensors to gather any meaningful data.
I would much rather see something like this worked into a HUD.
"It is a solemn thought: dead, the noblest man's meat is inferior to pork."
You have got this all wrong. The "final" mass is not much smaller than the "initial" mass. This isn't a case of a single object whose mass suddenly shrinks; there are two separate objects here that are loosely coupled and traveling at the same velocity. No masses are changing.
Let's take a simple case: the bike and rider hit a low concrete wall. The bike stops, the rider keeps going. He will be traveling at the same speed as when he was riding (until he lands, that is). His momentum is conserved because his mass has not changed.
The mass of the bike/rider combo is the mass of the bike plus the mass of the rider. The velocity of the combo is the same as the velocity of the bike or rider by themselves.
m_c = m_b + m_r
v_c = v_b = v_r
Therefore
p_c = m_c * v_c
= (m_b + m_r) * v_c
= (m_b * v_c) + (m_r + v_c)
= (m_b * v_b) + (m_r + v_r)
= p_b + p_c
This means the momenta can be considered separately. When the bike hits the wall, its velocity (and hence momentum) go to zero, and its kinetic energy goes into deforming the frame. The rider's momentum is separate, and is of course conserved. His mass doesn't change, so his velocity doesn't change. Ignoring air resistance (and friction if he's sliding on the ground), he flies off the bike at the same speed the bike was going.
Of course, as others have pointed out, the speed at which the rider's head impacts the road will be about the same as if he had just fallen over while sitting on his bike, since the road is roughly parallel to the rider's forward velocity.
-A. Coward
I've responded to a handfull of motorcycle collisions in my area and only one of the drivers survived. He was bruised all over and had a broken radius and ulna.
Everyone else died instantly when they slammed into another vehicle, guardrail, divider, or embankment.
It's strange though--even after responding to all these, I still want to get a bike...
There's no place like
The old "going too fast" chestnut. I don't like the phrase excessive speed I prefer the phrase inappropriate speed. In the UK 70MPH is legal on a motorway but is it safe on a raining or foggy day with limited visibility or with a lot of traffic on the road? Conversely is 100MPH unsafe on a straight dry road with little traffic and great visibility.
My bike accelerates faster than an average European car and stops quicker than an average European car (0-100-0 mph in 15 seconds) and as any good driver will say it's often safer to accelerate out of trouble rather than to break in to it (ask any traffic cop who's been properly trained). I have done 135mph on public roads with the right conditions. But in built up areas with children and pedestrians I will ride somewhat under the speed limit.
If speed per se was the factor then there would be deaths in motorbike racing all the time. There aren't and those that are usually not because of the "off" but because they get hit by another bike or hit something hard.
Read the report yourself, before you start preaching, with the baseless expectation that it will support your own idiotic assumptions. BTW, that line is the first and foremost conclusion of the report, and the third sentence in the whole thing.
But that only addresses your second statement, being "The majority of bike accidents do not involve cars." Let's deal with the first one regarding alcohol, "Actually the most common danger to motorcyclists is alcohol."
Hm. Almost half...definitely enough to point out that drinking on a motorcycle is still a bad idea, but definitely not most either. See above, under "read the report yourself." I've seen too many fellow riders take stupid risks because they falsely believed them not to be among major causes of accidents, and guys like you who purport to be informed are a big part of that problem.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The manufactuer had a booth at the Seattle Bike Show last weekend with a demo "box" - basically a video screen showing the road and a helmet with the HUD system attached. The result is very neat: the thing is so close to your vision that your eyes pick up the information and display it "over" your normal field of vision. Within a few seconds, I wasn't looking "at" the information but at the "road" of the video. I could still see what gear, rpm and speed was being projected without refocusing. That being said, I didn't care for it: It is an external mounted display that I know I would lose or damage. If helmets came with the system built in, I would consider it, but...
- Erston
It's called "the Hurt Report" (after Dr.Harry Hurt). There are plenty of copies floating around, so finding it shouldn't be a problem. One of the findings was that 2/3 of bike-car accidents was the result of the car failing to yield the right of way.
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