Using a Motorcycle Probe Vehicle to Provide Infrastructure Information for Powered Two Wheelers

Abstract

Powered two wheelers are a consistently popular mode of transportation and riding them is a widely practiced recreational activity. However, with regards to safety powered two wheelers are clearly vulnerable road users, for whom accidents of all types yield more severe outcomes on average than for larger vehicles. One way to ensure the safety of powered two-wheeler riders is to identify challenging infrastructure properties, such as transversal evenness qualities or potholes, through the use of probe vehicles. We present the analysis of infrastructure properties through data collected with a motorcycle probe vehicle, previously employed to study human driving dynamics and assess the risk thereof. We present the first steps towards a new standardized evaluation of motorcycle driving dynamics data for this purpose and show that our outcomes can be achieved based on in-vehicle driving dynamics data. This holds the potential to enable the provision of safety relevant data from everyday driven vehicles, which represents the needs of powered two wheelers as much as those of passenger cars or larger vehicle-types and could serve as a template for similar analyses employing smaller probe vehicles like bicycles or (e-)scooters.