Alongside the rise of self-driving cars, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) technology is set to massively change the motorcycling landscape – arguably for the better.
The technology comes in a variety of forms, but its basics involves cars, trucks, motorcycles, and possibly even pedestrians sharing basic travel data, like which lane they are in, how fast they are going, and whether they are changing lanes, coming to a stop, or a similar action.
Being able to communicate these basic pieces of telemetry, and thus alert drivers and trigger self-driving systems, means a big safety increase for all motorists – motorcyclists especially.
Bosch estimates that one-third of motorcycle crashes could be prevented with V2V technology – basically any car-motorcycle crash where the car driver didn’t see the motorcyclist, or vice versa.
Bosch is just one of several companies that is working on V2V systems for motorcycles and other vehicles, though Bosch’s design is a good example of how motorcyclists can benefit from sharing vehicle information.
Bosch uses the European Public WLAN standard (ITS G5 – 5.9 GHz), which transmits data ten times per second. On-board V2V computers then take the information that they receive, and interpret it to create alerts and warnings for motorists.
The wireless standard also allows for data hopping, so the short-range transmissions can be shared by relaying them through vehicles. This means that riders and drivers can be alerted to an accident that is several miles away, by other vehicles relaying that crash signal to them.
For the Luddites in the crowd, there is of course a wide-range of concerns that come from vehicle-to-vehicle technology, and we still haven’t seen compelling arguments to allay those fears — especially when it comes to privacy — from both regional governments and companies like Bosch.
With short-range transmissions, those privacy concerns aren’t terribly large at first, but with the ability to hop signals between vehicles, this obviously creates a much larger issue, with a V2V connectivity effectively creating a mesh network between vehicles, which could potentially be abused.
Obviously, this is still early days for V2V technology, so it will be interesting to see how it grows in the coming years. Asphalt & Rubber has been alerted that this is one of the bigger issues that the US Senate Motorcycle Caucus will tackle in its coming sessions. Stay tuned.
Source: Bosch; Photo: BMW
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