Motorbike Users Safety Enhancement
Motorcycle Users Safety Enhancement Project
Despite representing a small part of the road users (e.g. 2% of the traffic in France) the percentage of motorcyclists in the total deaths is the highest of the VRUs (World road deaths in 2010: 23% PTWs, 22% pedestrian and 5% Cyclist). A motorcyclist is between 9 to 30 times more likely to be killed in a traffic crash than a driver (OECD, 2015). However, thanks to the new technologies available in the automotive industry the safety of powered two-wheeler users can be considerably improved.
Knowing the importance of Euro NCAP in motivating the OEMs to invest in safety, in May 2016 the Interior Minister Mr. Bernard Cazeneuve and the Transport Minister Mrs. Ségolène Royal wrote a letter to Euro NCAP claiming for a safety rating. At the beginning of 2017 Euro NCAP included the scenarios with motorcycles in their Roadmap 2020/2025.
How will it be possible to evaluate the systems without the necessary tools to do so? Which tools have to be developed? Which will be the best systems to avoid the accidents? Will it generate new accidents? What about ADAS systems in the motorcycle? Is it feasible to perform real test to assess the systems?
The aim of this project was to answer these issues and to provide the OEMs and TIERs1 the tools that will enable them to develop and evaluate their systems. A first task consisted in studying the main accident scenarios and possible systems that could help to avoid them or, at least, reduce their consequences. Simultaneously, tools enabling to improve these systems and to evaluate their performances were developed.
Work Packages
WP1:
The characteristics of accidents between different European countries are not necessarily the same.
One of the first objectives of the MUSE project was to study the major European countries, in terms of riders deaths, to see possible differences or similarities.
This has been a complex job due to variations between countries in terms of accident registration and the amount of detail of national databases.
In a second step, a study of most of the In-depth databases available in Europe was carried out in order to know the maximum of details of the accident scenarios identified as the most usual.
This work has identified the main accident scenarios between passenger vehicles and motorcycles as well as showed up the differences between European countries.
The countries considered in the study represent 75% of the fatal victims in Europe, that allows us to draw conclusions at the European level.
WP2:
In order to be able to evaluate the performance of the different sensors and systems, it is essential to develop the necessary testing tools. It is for this reason that in the project we have defined the specifications that a target must meet to be considered representative of a real motorcycle.
These characteristics are not limited to the purely visual aspect but also to the radar reflectivity or Lidar detection characteristics. Indeed, these two sensor technologies are essential for the operation of ADAS systems.
Beyond detection requirements, the target must also be flexible enough to be impacted at high speed in the development of the system and at the same time resilient enough to ensure an acceptable duration of use.
More than a dozen workshops were organized in collaboration with the industry and 4activesystems in order to succeed in this work.
WP3:
Thanks to previous studies we knew that the speed of the bike was an important variable of accidents. It was therefore necessary to study whether the solutions on the market were able to meet the requirements of WP1.
These propulsion systems must be able to reproduce the scenarios while respecting the detection characteristics of the target.
In the context of Euro NCAP or regulatory tests, where these systems may be brought into use, it is essential to ensure repeatability. For this reason, discussions between industry and platform providers took place to find a compromise.
WP4:
Taking into account the main scenarios obtained in WP1, the limitations of the current propulsion systems studied in WP3 and the ADAS systems identified as the most appropriate in WP5, test protocols have been created in order to evaluate the system’s performances.
The ultimate goal of these protocols is to serve as basis for future Euro NCAP PTW 2022 protocols.
WP5:
In a first place, we presented the state of the art of existing ADAS solutions in cars, motorcycles and current intercommunication solutions between vehicles and between vehicles and infrastructure.
This allowed us to evaluate their potential to avoid or mitigate the accident scenarios obtained in WP1 and their possible influence on the generation of new accident scenarios.
In a second part, we studied whether the current systems covered the accident scenarios that we had obtained and we thought about the possible new technologies and their effectiveness.
Partners
