Honda Blind-Spot Protection

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Honda feels that if your motorcycle can understand where a motorcycle could potentially be blind to other vehicles and either warn you or intervene, it can help eliminate accidents. (Honda/)

The idea of a blind-spot monitoring system isn’t new, but Honda is turning the concept on its head with a setup that appears to be destined for a future version of the Africa Twin. Rather than warning you about vehicles in your blind spot, it intervenes when you’re riding in the danger zone where another driver can’t see you.

We’ve already seen plenty of evidence that Honda is developing an array of rider assistance systems based on radar and camera technology, with the Africa Twin and Gold Wing set to lead the way. Instead of following the path of BMW, Ducati, KTM, and Kawasaki, which all use Bosch’s off-the-shelf equipment for their pioneering radar-fitted models, Honda is developing its own system. Despite the fact that it’s late to the radar party, Honda feels confident that it will be better able to tailor its systems toward the ambitious goal of ending fatalities on Honda bikes by 2050 at the latest. The company’s latest patent applications show that one such idea is to use the equipment to help avoid dangerous situations before they even arise.

The basic concept is that maximizing your chances of being seen by other road users will help prevent accidents. Motorcycles are small and easily lost behind the ever-thicker roof pillars of modern cars, and while riding we tend to look at the eyes of drivers to judge whether we’ve been spotted. Here’s where Honda appears to have found a flaw with the sort of radar-assisted adaptive cruise control systems fitted to a growing number of new bikes. Keeping a constant speed or distance from a vehicle directly ahead of your bike could mean you’re spending a dangerous amount of time hidden in the blind spot of a vehicle in the next lane.

It’s an issue particular to multilane highways and freeways, but those are precisely the sort of roads where adaptive cruise control systems are particularly useful, as they take away the strain of keeping pace with surrounding traffic during long, more mundane rides. Honda is developing a system that combines a forward-facing camera with a front radar to create a smarter adaptive cruise control that does the same job, but also considers where your bike is positioned on the road and tries to determine whether you can be seen in the mirrors or through the windows of the vehicles in lanes alongside you.

An automobile’s and a semitruck’s blind spots are completely different. For a system to work effectively, it needs to understand the difference between the two. (Honda/)

Honda’s patent document explains that it detects vehicles diagonally ahead of you by using the radar and adds information from the camera to try to determine what type of vehicles they are. The blind spots of cars and semitrucks are quite different, so that step is vital. Once the system has established the type of vehicle, it uses a preprogrammed template to work out whether you’re likely to be hidden in its blind spot. If you’re using the cruise control at the time, it will then automatically accelerate or decelerate a fraction to shift your bike into a position where you’re more likely to be seen. Even with the adaptive cruise turned off it flashes a warning on the dashboard to tell you there’s a risk you might not have been spotted.

The system isn’t going to be a game changer in terms of accident prevention. But with radar and cameras being rapidly embraced by bike manufacturers it’s something that can be implemented purely though software once the hardware is in place, creating an additional layer of safety without any substantial additional cost. While Honda’s plan for zero motorcycle-related deaths in less than three decades’ time still seems ambitious to the point of impossibility, chipping away at the problem with technology like this could ultimately bring them closer to achieving those lofty goals.

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