Impact Speed Reduction Induced By Pre-Crash Braking For Motorcycles – Parametric Evaluation Based on Real Accidents

Motorcycle safety is a major issue, and motorcyclists have not benefited as much as motorists from advances in active safety technology. Pre-crash braking, intended to mitigate rather than avoid impact, was evaluated by simulating 60 real-world crashes from two detailed databases. A parametric study was conducted to estimate the influence of the field of view, range, triggering strategy, applied deceleration, and the presence of a visibility mask. Three representative configurations among 450 possibilities have been defined as pessimistic, average and optimistic. The median reductions in motorcyclist impact speed are respectively 0 km/h, 7.4 km/h and 11.6 km/h. The results are useful to evaluate injury and cost reduction benefits and to improve the design of detection systems as well as triggering and braking algorithms. This method, based on real accidents and pre-crash braking modeling and simulation, is reliable and relevant and can be used to evaluate other active safety systems.