My quest to make motorcycle riding that tad bit safer

When I was commuting daily in the SF fog, I discovered that putting on of these [1] on my helmet did wonders to keep cars further off my tail. It moves the brake light up to eye level for people in SUVs and also triggers on engine braking.<p>Wish it were cheaper, but was a worthwhile investment for me.<p>Also, consider looking into airbag vests if you ride regularly. Also expensive but (supposedly) make a huge difference in crash outcomes.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brakefreetech.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;brake-free" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.brakefreetech.com&#x2F;products&#x2F;brake-free</a>

It&#x27;s very important to consider failure modes when adding something like this.<p>You should ensure there&#x27;s no way the new addition could prevent the brake light from working if the electronics were to fail (either electrically, software glitch, corrosion, bad connection, etc). Because failing to light the brake lights upon braking could directly cause an accident.<p>Secondary perhaps (though still important) is to prevent false positives (brake light illuminating when just driving along normally). That&#x27;s still bad, but at least other drivers would be suspicious of it and it&#x27;s more obvious.

Brake lights should be activated whenever the vehicle is significantly slowing down regardless of whether the brakes are being used or not. And this should be standard across _all_ vehicles, not just motorcycles. I would say brakes should also override any automated method too, just in case of malfunction.<p>This is just (I am not trying to trivialise the incredible amount of effort required to take a hardware project, even a simple one, to market) an LIS3DH wired to some brake lights. Every single road-vehicle could easily have this technology.

I live in a mountainous area that attracts huge amount of motorcyclists on weekends. Most of the fatal accidents I recall in the last years (usually around a dozen per year) were caused by right of way violations by cars, by excessive speeding of the cyclists, or by risky overtakes. I am not sure how a brake light would help there.<p>Also, serious off-topic question to the motorcycle enthusiasts here: how do you cope with the fact that your weekend leisure ride is often a massive noise disturbance for hundreds of people and animals?

The author did a great job actually building the project, doing a layout and custom design rather than just stitching together off the shelf modules. Good work.<p>That being said, in 20 years of riding motorcycles and being an ATGATT (all the gear, all the time) kind of rider, I&#x27;m mixed on the need for this. It&#x27;s something I have thought about doing with a direct hardwire to the throttle, but I can&#x27;t come up with a situation where I genuinely think it will stop a crash. Maybe if someone is tailgating you, but you should be readily letting them pass rather than relying on their reaction skills anyway. Anything that is sudden and requires a large -dv&#x2F;dt, you are going to hit your brakes. Engine braking alone is usually used in situations where the road&#x2F;conditions dictates it, so other drivers are naturally slowing down too.<p>But I suppose it is also an &quot;it can only help&quot; type product.

I wondered once if it would be possible to ride a motorcycle safely if I drove carefully (everyone I know who rides has been in at least one serious accident).<p>I thought: I could look at the data, but I see so many motorcyclists driving dangerously that the data wouldn&#x27;t teach me much.<p>So then I thought: I bet if I look at the accident rate for women riders it would be interesting.<p>I found that in the UK, male riders have seven times the accident rate of female riders.<p>So I guess how you ride does make a huge difference.

&gt; BMW’s dynamic brake light, for example, flashes during emergency braking to alert trailing drivers, greatly enhancing road safety.<p>Mind you, that this is not enabled in all countries. In the USA the rear fog lights turn on in addition to the brake lights under heavy braking, as flashing the lights weren&#x27;t allowed.<p>They remain on until you no longer depress the brakes.<p>Unsure if they&#x27;re allowed right now, or whether the ones you see are aftermarket mods.<p>For BMW you can change the coding (configuration) relatively easy.<p>There is also a difference in 3 flashes when you touch the brakes, constant flashing while pressing the brakes, or only flashing under having braking.<p>I can&#x27;t imagine driving in stop&amp;go traffic where all brake lights are constantly flashing.

I&#x27;ve been a motorcyclist for over 30 years.<p>I pretty much live by this:<p>“If you&#x27;ve put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a fuck - you&#x27;ve already blown it.” ― Neal Stephenson, Zodiac

Thank you all for your questions and support, since this is blowing up a bit, I have a discount &#x27;HN30&#x27; 30% off, if anyone is interested

TBH, I&#x27;m surprised this isn&#x27;t already common. It is very similar to what EVs do, due to the relatively high regenerative braking.

If only somebody would make motorcycles less noisy.. I dream of the day where there are neither mosquitos nor motorcycle noise. Two most annoying things during the summer.

I believe these would be illegal in Ontario.<p>The section 62 of the Highway Traffic Act says this:<p>&gt; Intermittent red light restricted<p>&gt; (14) Subject to subsections (14.1), (15) and (17.1), no person shall use a lamp, other than turning signal lamps or the vehicular hazard warning signal lamps commonly known as four way flashers, that produces intermittent flashes of red light.<p>There is an exemption for bicycles but not motorcycles.

I unsuccessfully built something like this for my bicycle a while back: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;niels-ole.com&#x2F;bike&#x2F;maker&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;20&#x2F;bicycle-light" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;niels-ole.com&#x2F;bike&#x2F;maker&#x2F;2020&#x2F;02&#x2F;20&#x2F;bicycle-light</a><p>&gt; It turned out that when I accelerate strongly, I pull the bike back, at some point in the rotation of the pedals. This is rightfully detected as a sudden deceleration of the bicycle.<p>I guess on a much heavier motorcycle the deceleration of the motorcycle is actually a meaningful indicator of the combination driver+motorcycle slowing down.

Your site really needs a video :) I&#x27;ve run Hyperlites on my bikes forever (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hyperlites.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hyperlites.com&#x2F;</a>). I like them as they don&#x27;t interfere with the original brake light, and provide additional lights higher up on the bike.

My motorcycle pet peeve is that if you ride bicycles routinely the control differences between bikes and motorcycles become potentially dangerous, especially while riding the motorcycle. I&#x27;m not sure how to align their controls more, but if your bike has a rotary handle shifter and one day on the motorcycle you &quot;shift&quot; with the throttle, it&#x27;s not going to go well. There are a number of other possible control goofs you can do that aren&#x27;t great.

Engine braking with an internal combustion engine generates a vacuum in the intake manifold, because the throttle is closed while the pistons suck air.<p>(Performance cars sometimes have vacuum gauges to measure this. Aftermarket ones can be installed.)<p>A brake light could be rigged to activate past a certain a vacuum threshold. (There would be some false positives that are possibly not worth caring about.)<p>For all the engineering described in the article, I&#x27;m surprised it doesn&#x27;t mention this possibility, if only to give reasons why it was discarded. (Maybe it&#x27;s a bad solution; I have no ide!)<p>It seems that a vacuum-driven brake light could possibly have an advantage of kicking in faster than a motion detector, because it could trigger as soon as the revs are dropping with the throttle closed, before the clutch engages to actually connect the engine braking to the wheel.<p>I.e. blip-throttle before downshift -&gt; vacuum kicking in &#x2F; light comes on -&gt; downshift completes, actual braking begins.

Shame on the author. I clicked the &quot;cats&quot; link in the header only to find out it&#x27;s short for categories. Boo.

I rode a Honda 350 for seven years starting with the Oil Crisis, before bike headlights even turned on automatically, although I kept mine lit. The biggest problem was other drivers not noticing me coming on or from the side, because compared to cars bikes were and still are rare on the road. They&#x27;d turn as I was passing their blind spot, or pull out in front of me from a cross street, etc. Seemed like I&#x27;d have a close call about once per week, but I don&#x27;t recall ever having a threat of being hit from behind.

Ooooh what a title<p>In 2019 I was a bicycling a lot, and really wanted to get something with a motor, so I could be a bit faster&#x2F;farther&#x2F;not so sweaty with my trips. I had access to a car but rarely used it.<p>I really don&#x27;t like many inherent safety issues with motorcycles and never seriously considered obtaining one, but kept wanting a two-wheeled vehicle with a motor.<p>I&#x27;d ridden a 50cc scooter in 2019 for a few days, and it was fine then, but I never considered one seriously since.<p>Eventually, in 2020 it was an emergency room doctor who suggested I look at &#x27;real scooters&#x27; instead of the 50cc things.<p>So I did, eventually I ended up owning a 170cc scooter&#x2F;moped thing, and it feels infinitely safer than a motorcycle, and a bicycle. I&#x27;ve done 20,000 miles on scooters since then, probably, all over the world,<p>including Denver to Canada and back once.<p>Cheaper lighter more efficient, than motorcycles. more stable, lower center of mass, better wind protection, useful storage options, too, compared to motorcycles <i>and</i> bicycles.<p>I ride mine year round, no issues.<p>I wrote a page trying to capture some of the upsides, but it&#x27;s hard to get the tone right on the internet:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;josh.works&#x2F;scootering" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;josh.works&#x2F;scootering</a>

This was a great read — love how it blends real-world frustration with a builder’s mindset.<p>The insight about how little attention goes into motorcycle specific safety tech is spot on. The market tends to over-index on cars, but the stakes for motorcyclists are arguably higher per mile. Would love to see more open source or modular frameworks emerge in this space something others could build on top of, regionally or by use-case.<p>Curious if you explored anything around passive detection (weather, terrain, phone telemetry) or if most of your work focused on rider input and behavior?

I like this! Have thought of it for both bikes and cars, I drive manual and occasionally just downchange coming up to lights or off motorways. Also used to have a zx636 and bought an LED brake light that flashed obnoxiously when triggered (F1 style), I like to think the safety it added offset how annoyed I was probably making everyone behind me.

This is something I want for all of my street bikes. I roll off the throttle a fair bit before grabbing the brakes on my Ruckus and way earlier on my modified Metropolitan. Always watching the mirrors while doing so. And my 1966 Sears ( made by Gilera ) only has a brake light switch on the rear brake pedal. I&#x27;m so conditioned to use the front brakes on a motorcycle that I often forget to tap the rear brake to signal other drivers. I&#x27;ll be ordering 3 myself if they ship to the US, or getting my buddy in the UK to snag them for me.

Good example how to push forward and do the thing.<p>Otherwise, is it me or the info on the product page is a bit dry. No size specs, no instructions, not enough pics. It is like the last step to convert is not fully complete yet.<p>One of the issues usually is to make sure the part is compatible with the bike as otherwise you need to spend money to get it and then “try it”. The suggestion with tge pictures how to put it would be useful as well.

Road bike tail lights have had IMU controlled brake light functionality for years. Even fairly cheap ones from Aliexpress. Example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;iH-dYDkd_U0?t=123" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;iH-dYDkd_U0?t=123</a>

This could help but the most dangerous situations I experienced myself were, when someone was coming from the side (perpendicular), especially on T-junctions.<p>Classic &quot;sorry mate I didn&#x27;t see you&quot; case.<p>Not sure smart braking light in the back would help much here.

I use <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.neutrinoblackbox.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.neutrinoblackbox.com&#x2F;</a> for same with great success. I tapped my brake line electronics and the app lets me set up the sensitivity for when decelerating brightens them up. Also a lot of other fun features you can read about on their site.

&gt; <i>“Moreover, during intense braking scenarios, it flashes proportionately to the braking intensity.”</i><p>In Europe, a lot of modern cars have a similar feature. When braking particular hard (eg: a sudden emergency stop from highway speeds) the brake lights will flash rapidly to warn drivers behind you. It’s a very good safety feature, IMO. But not legal in North America?

Where&#x27;s the quest to make motorcycles a huge bit quieter? I am so fed up with all the loud motorcycles in my city. Seems pretty arrogant of people with loud vehicles to think that we all want to hear them.

&quot;BMW’s dynamic brake light, for example, flashes during emergency braking to alert trailing drivers, greatly enhancing road safety.&quot;<p>This isn&#x27;t obvious to someone who has no idea. I just assumed it&#x27;s an aftermarket adjustment for people that like flashy vehicles.

I have a garage full of motos (currently 9, probably half of which are relevant) if you want someone to help test your product.

Great idea. I thought about this when I rented an electric Renault car, and found that in regenerative braking mode… brake lights do not come on when lifting the foot off the accelerator. A friend in a car behind said he found it confusing and wondered what I was doing. Such a bizarre design flaw not to have brake lights come on when this happens.

the biggest way to make a motorcycle safer, IMO, is remove the need for shifting.<p>Lower the center of gravity, reduce the weight, increase the wind protection, make the riding stance really comfortable.<p>Make it easily accommodate a backpack, or a passenger, or both.<p>And you have a scooter!<p>They&#x27;re unconventional in the greater usa, but wildly fun.<p>Generally, it seems like one can entertain the best parts of a bicycle, feet, and a car, and a motorcycle, all in one.<p>I wrote a bit of an ode to scooters, here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;josh.works&#x2F;scootering" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;josh.works&#x2F;scootering</a><p>I wish more of my friends rode scooters!<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;josh.works&#x2F;scootering" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;josh.works&#x2F;scootering</a>

I do very similar things manually already. I engine break and apply very light rear break pressure to trigger my break lights, and let off the rear break and reapply it for the “flashing” effect. Once at a complete stop and in neutral I flash my break lights off&#x2F;on until the car behind me is at a complete stop.<p>The benefit of this is tool is that it reduces cognitive load while also working in emergency situations where I’m more focused on operating the motorcycle than signaling to others.

Out of curiosity, wouldn&#x27;t an accelerometer alone not work for this purpose? I see you&#x27;ve hooked it up with engine RPM as well, but realistically you want to indicate when you&#x27;re slowing down, no matter the reason, right? Is there something I&#x27;m fundamentally missing here?<p>This is a great idea though, and definitely something that more bikes should come stock with. There&#x27;s a very clear benefit for safety.

It&#x27;s a nice story. Some statistics might help motivate concern. E.g., The disproportionate risk per mile for motorcycling is chilling. But in California &quot;rear end&quot; as a category appears to be only about 15% of all MC accidents, and even then the category doesn&#x27;t distinguish being hit from hitting.<p>I suspect a lot of the effort here is marketing, so you might extract extra value (and do more good) with a complementary product.<p>A big benefit might come from controllable red light and warning bell for the rider when you&#x27;re more than 15% over speed limit. Speed is the biggest risk by far, and also the risk you can control (since no brake light can defend against the inattentive driver). It&#x27;s way too easy to not realize how fast you&#x27;re going.<p>Indeed, for that you could also factor in stopping distances. Starting out with lighter, nimble bikes, I got in real trouble with the 650+ lb monsters that dither about stopping. Those would get a lower threshold. And you&#x27;d apply a higher threshold for open road vs. traffic, etc.<p>Then build out a UI workflow and logging, and it might grow into an interesting intelligent copilot product line addressing all the pilot-controllable factors. As a motorcyclist, it&#x27;s really on you to save your own bacon.

I feel like I see more motorcycles doing stupid things on the roadway than I used to.

I sold my bike and gave up riding because it was just too dangerous. It&#x27;s not just that people don&#x27;t see you, they&#x27;re not even looking anymore, they&#x27;re on their phones.

The issue with brake lights is they are binary on&#x2F;off. It would likely be better if the brightness would vary by how hard the braking is. Like getting brighter and brighter and then rapidly flashing.

This would be a fantastic standard feature for aftermarket tail lights - which used to be nigh-obligatory because OEMs still hadn&#x27;t adopted LEDs.<p>Throttle position sensor would be another data source, but model-specific.

That&#x27;s actually brilliant. Same issue w&#x2F; some sports cars too or even cars coasting in slow stop and go traffic when coming up from behind from high speed traffic.

same as with cars - it seems the technology that is actually built in the products is just the annoying &#x2F; useless ones instead of technology that would be actually useful e.g. to safety

Really nice project.<p>If you are thinking commercial you may want to look into IP issues to see if there are active patents (probably expired by now?)<p>As far as design choices, based on my journeys in similar types of projects: (just my$.02, not a critique)<p>USB will be a significant point of failure. The connector has voltage present and electrochemical activity will destroy the connector over time unless you can keep it in a clean, low humidity environment. Consider a different connector or a wireless SOC to eliminate this point of failure and make a completely potted unit possible. If you use usb, make sure there is no voltage normally present, even from the data connections, and you have a good watertight plug for the access port. Everything gets wet on bikes. Everything. nRF52840 or ESP32C3 would be my go to choices here, but there are a lot of excellent candidates. BLE is probably the protocol you will want to use. This will facilitate making a simple app to do firmware updates and feature adjustments.<p>Consider eliminating the need for RPM input. This will be a significant point of failure and your greatest installation headache across different motorcycles.<p>As a failsafe, control the lamp output pass-through with a pulled-up mosfet of at least 50a capacity (you won’t ever see this high current, but it protects from bulb changing short circuits and other unknowns)<p>An Infineon BTS5016-2EKA or its low side equivalent is probably a great choice, and gives you both of the switches you need in one package, for less than $3, with full protection features. ( I assume you will need one to interrupt existing signaling and one to light where’s there is no activation from the brake switches)<p>The main thing is the lamp must light with regular inputs even if the circuit loses power or the chip gets a hole drilled in it. If it comes on when it shouldn’t, that is also bad, but not as bad.<p>Idk what sensor you are using, but consider the icm20948, it’s not too expensive ($3-4) and it has onboard sensor fusion. Only downside is it’s 1.8v, but if you use the nRf52840 that’s not an issue. Even so, level conversion isn’t too big a deal. Sensor fusion will greatly simplify understanding what’s going on.<p>Since power consumption is not critical I would consider using an ML algorithm on the sensor data to detect hazard conditions, lie downs, etc and filter out steep uphill&#x2F;downhill false activation&#x2F;failure to activate.<p>You could collect the data easily and train a simple model with off the shelf tools designed specifically for doing that kind of thing with MCUs. I forget the name but it’s commonly used for voice action or gesture training. You might want to train on a few bikes though, especially ones with different vibration frequencies.<p>Now you can add a subscription model for premium flashing features and “enhanced AI” with in-app GPT4 access to an interactive tour guide and a “best rides” feature customized to your riding style and search history! Business could pay-to play, and insurance companies, motorcycle manufacturers, and tire sellers would love that personally identifiable riding data! (Please, don’t)

This would also be useful on my 2-door Civic.

I crashed recently after someone in front applied break too hard and too late. Couldn’t walk for two weeks—something like BrakeBright would’ve been a gamechanger. How do you prevent false triggers on bumpy roads though?

A legal mandate should be made to require this on all motorbikes.

I ride motorcyles so found this quite interesting.<p>Instead of a motion sensor, why not simply turn on the brakes whenever you down shift and leave it on until the throttle is engaged?

20 years riding bikes and I never knew I have this problem. Even now I don&#x27;t have it. It sounds like a nice gimmick but not a solution to a real problem, at least not for European traffic where bikes are reasonably fine and where the top cause of motorcycle fatalities is riding way too fast.

EV’s need this too! I’m noticing my Tesla isn’t doing a great job turning on the brake lights during one pedal driving. It seems to need pretty hard deceleration before they come on.

I actually think it is lame when engine braking activates the brake light. There are two distinct behaviors: slowing down gently, with engine braking, and slowing down intensely with physical brake application. When I am engine braking like going down a long hill I do not want to flag the drivers behind me that I am braking ... I just want to use the compression of the engine to regulate my speed. Anyone who lives in a mountainous area will tell you this. Seeing solid brake lights going down the hill is a red flag &#x2F; skill issue. Some manufacturers have begun to add artificial brake lights during engine braking though and I find it disingenuous.

The only safe way - just don’t.

<i>&quot;Committed to empowering users, I developed a subsequent version incorporating a USB port. Currently, I’m finalizing user-friendly software utilities, enabling riders to easily update BrakeBright firmware, customize features, and personalize the system to match individual riding styles and preferences.&quot;</i><p>A brake light that requires system administration?