Enhanced motorcycle conspicuity
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An experimental investigation of enhanced powered two wheeler (PTW) conspicuity was conducted, involving driving simulator experiments with 10 European car drivers.
The driving simulator consisted of an instrumented car with interactive steering, braking and throttle controls; a 180 degree high resolution real-time visual display; a road circuit involving five real accident sites and scenarios from MAIDS (In-depth investigations of accidents involving powered two wheelers); left turn and crossing intersections; 3D photographic images of the sites; and PTW and car lighting treatments photometrically calibrated against full-scale measurements in terms of recorded luminance contrast ratios. The simulator was validated using human visual occlusion tests involving vehicle detection.
The main tests involved full-task, "blind" experiments, in which the subjects did not know the true purpose of the experiment, and which involved realistic driving in urban and rural conditions, and various primary and secondary realistic driving tasks. The baseline PTW lighting treatment was a single dipped-beam headlamp of a typical sport motorcycle. Three enhanced lighting treatments were used. Each driver subject was exposed to each lighting treatment two times at each accident site over a total of 800 treatment exposures.
The following parameters were measured in environments of 10 and 90% cars with head light on:
- the distance of the opposing vehicle at 1st eye fixation (i.e., detection),
- the probability that a driver will "GO" in front of an opposing vehicle,
- the collision probability,
Finally the potential reduction in the overall number of accidents was calculated based on MAIDS results.
As a preliminary conclusion, it can be stated that the simulator methodology was found to provide a powerful tool for researching differences in driver behaviour and collision probability with varying daytime lighting treatments in this sample of real PTW accident scenarios.