The US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration just recently came out with a report entitled A Study of Motorcycle Riding Braking Control Behavior as of March 2011. It is a report where a motorcycle riding simulator was used to study how laypeople, regular motorcycle riders, apply their brakes and braking systems in emergency situations. The report and study included sports style motorcycles and cruiser style motorcycles. The riders of these motorcycles are chosen from different motorcycle riding experience levels and they were exposed to situations where they needed to apply brakes from a normal flowing braking event to emergency braking situation.
As to how these motorcyclists use their brakes, a rider control inputs, response and interactions with other motor vehicles were recorded as well as rider control inputs. Questionnaires were used to obtain rider characteristic data. The data from all of the sources was used to study and analyze with the intent to investigate possible relationships between the way a motorcycle rider brakes, the riders characteristics and the event outcome.
In the event of emergency braking being necessary, this behavior was analyzed and studied based on only two scenarios involving an opposing view that transferred into the riders lean that he or she was using; the other motor vehicle in a situation traveled quickly and unexpectedly into the motorcyclist's lane.
There were no instances where the motorcyclists only use the rear brake in any of the test scenarios. There were however instances where some riders only use the front brake however most riders use a combination of both front and rear motorcycle brakes. In this report the following information or content is within: the project objectives and background, the technical approach used, how the riding simulator was set up and how the data was acquired, outsiders were recruited and screened, the protocols for the experiment which include safety and run procedures of the data was analyzed and finally the results from the front and rear brake usage and relationship to riding factors were among the discussion and conclusions at the end of this motorcycle brake report.
One of the goals of this study was to gain an understanding as to how bikers use of brakes in emergency type situations. Specifically, do they use the front, rear or both? One of the scenarios tested because it was one of the most seen in real life situations was when a tractor-trailer slowly pulls out into the lane the motorcyclist is driving in from the motorcycle rider's right, say from a side street. The other scenario tested was where a motorcyclist was approaching an intersection where the light turned green for the motorcyclists, the biker would be going through the intersection however a vehicle with a red light, across traffic, is moving through the intersection and runs the red light. The second scenario is more of an emergency situation where the first scenario took a little bit more time to develop so that the motorcyclists had a little bit more time to react.
Other questions attempted to have answered during this motorcycle breaking study included: is there rider braking behavior which can be identified to be used to predict the outcome of a possible collision? And, do rider factors such as age, experience, preferred motorcycle type, and rider training influence breaking behavior?
This study and many others can be found at the government's website www.nhtsa.gov
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