I often berate the Motorcycle Industry Council (MIC) for not doing enough to promote and protect motorcycle riding in the United States, but we also have to give credit where credit is due, and the MIC is due a little credit for a change.
Working in conjunction with the Congressional Motorcycle Caucus, the MIC hosted a briefing titled “Intelligent Transportation Systems and Automated Vehicle Applications Impacts on Motorcycle Safety,” which focused on vehicle-to-vehicle technologies, and how they apply to motorcycles.
The briefing featured a panel of industry and research experts on the issue: Sam Campbell, BMW Group; Gary Higgins, American Honda Motor Company, Inc.; Shane McLaughlin, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute; and Eric Teoh, Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
In the increasingly autonomous landscape of transportation, vehicle-to-vehicle communication (V2V) is set to be the first step of modernizing our roadways, with vehicles communicating to each other a variety of telemetry details to help avoid accidents and increase efficiency in traffic flow.
This comes at an important time, as both the US House of Representatives and US Senate are looking at legislation to build a framework for autonomous vehicles, and how to regulate this brave new world of automobile transportation.
The vehicle minority on roadways, it is easy for motorcycles to be left out of the discussion when it comes to V2V systems and vehicle autonomy. As we have already seen, as automobiles become more safe, motorcycles are starting to take up a larger share of vehicle fatalities.
Reducing the number of motorcycle fatalities, and keeping motorcycles as part of the growing technology of transportation is vital to the survival of the motorcycle industry.
Therefore, it is at the very least refreshing to see the MIC understanding that reality.
Source: Powersports Business
