Improving car drivers' perception of motorcyclists through innovative headlight configurations (original) (raw)

The most frequent cause of motorcycle accidents involves another vehicle violating the motorcycle's right-of-way at an intersection. In addition to detection errors, the misperception of the approaching motorcycle's speed and time-to-arrival is another driver error that may account for these accidents (e.g., Horswill et al., 2005). This misperception has been shown to be related to the small size of the motorcycle and the small angular velocity when it is approaching. In two experiments we tested the impact of different motorcycle headlight configurations in various ambient lighting conditions (daytime, dusk and nighttime). The participants drove the driving simulator and had to turn left across a line of vehicles composed of motorcycles and cars. The motorcycles were equipped with either a "standard" front light, a "horizontal configuration" (additionally to the standard front light, two lights were appended on the rear view mirrors so as to visually inc...