Tech
Motorcycles are about to get safer thanks to this AI collision alert system
The perks of a modern car with the freedom of a motorcycle.
On Monday, Ride Vision announced a $7 million funding round that will help it market and advance its collision aversion technology. The startup focuses on making the road a safer place for motorcycles. Ride Vision 1 can be hardwired to a two-wheeler, drawing less than would be needed to power a cell phone to fuel its AI-driven system.
Smarts for your bike — Ride Vision 1 includes two cameras that cover the motorcycle’s rear and front, including blind spots. It can alert the driver of potential collisions through side mirror-mounted LEDs. The system also provides info about distance-keeping threats from cars, trucks, other motorcycles, and even scooters.
Users receive customizable alerts using the connected smartphone app which also records up to two hours of video and tracks stats like lean angle and distance. Certain updates and upgrades like emergency contacts are kept behind a subscription paywall, but the free version of the app still offers security updates, bug fixes, and other standard app maintenance features.
Impacting the road — Motorcycles are notoriously dangerous vehicles that are 28 times more likely to end up in fatal crashes compared to passenger vehicles, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Even for the accident averse, statistics like this can keep their insurance premiums high.
“Ride Vision has the ability to improve upon the skill set of riders should the riders elect to share their ride data [and] an option of impacting insurance due to ongoing risk estimations,” a Ride Vision spokesperson told VentureBeat. “This data can be used to lower riders’ insurance rates and open up new business models, such as ‘usage-based insurance’ to train various models.”
With motorcycle ownership going up in the pandemic, Ride Vision could reduce two worries with one product. Its safety alert system will go on sale in select European countries in 2021, and it plans to expand throughout Europe and into North America.
