The Motorcycle Foundation launched the unprecedented, one year long motorcyclists Naturalistic Study in conjunction with Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. Designed to track comprehensive, real time routine riding that likely included near crash, pre-crash, and actual crash data that had been unavailable.
Traditional research would put the rider in a laboratory like environment or has to crash first and recall details after the fact. This study will be observing bikers in their day to day experiences and what they do on a natural basis. The do this by placing a camera or recording device on the motorcycle in an unobtrusive fashion so the biker soon becomes unaware of the device.
Unlike trying to grab research from an existing accident scene where things have been moved around, this data is collected as the recording device coincides with the brake pressure data along with the accelerometer data. This creates a picture where you can see how the rider reacted and the motorcycle reacted. This type of information will help in the future of riding bikes and building them.
Locations for this study were picked because they offer a variety of riding conditions and traffic densities. The three locations were The Mechanics Institute in Orlando Fla., The Motorcycle Safety Foundation Headquarters in Irvine Ca., and the VTTI in Blacksburg, Va.
This naturalistic study will provide information as well for rider education materials and training programsIt will also help create other safety countermeasures.
Riders travel over twenty five billion miles per year without incident. There are many lessons to be learned form these riders for our future.
Preliminary results are being released at a later date.
