Don’t fall off the radar…
We can be tricky for vehicle radar to spot, but BMW have an answer
‘Be Safe, Be Seen’ is a message that’s been hammered home to motorcyclists but the growing reliance on high-tech safety systems in cars means simply being visible to the human eye might not be enough. Radar is only just starting to appear on the most high-end of bikes, but the tech has been available in cars for years. Initially restricted to luxury vehicles, it is very much entering the mainstream, allowing a huge number of road users to offload some of the stress of keeping a careful eye on their surroundings. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Radar can ‘see’ through fog and spray and won’t be distracted by changing the radio station. But the tech has downsides, particularly when it comes to bikes, as their small size and plastic bodywork means they’re far less effective than cars at reflecting radar waves. The problem has existed at sea for years, where small, fibreglass boats are just as invisible to nautical radar as motorcycles can be to automotive ones, so BMW have looked to the solutions used at sea for inspiration.
As seen in a newly published patent application, BMW’s idea is to fit small reflectors on the extremities of a bike – notably the bars and the ends of the axles – to bounce radar waves back at the system which emitted them. These reflectors are simply miniaturized versions of nautical reflectors seen on the mast of a yacht.
They work on the principle of corner reflection. By putting reflective surfaces together at 90-degree angles to each other, forming a spherical array of threesided open boxes, you create a device that will reflect radar waves directly back at their source, whatever angle they come from. It’s a simple, passive solution to the
‘The idea comes from reflectors on yachts’
radar visibility problem.
Bike firms are acutely aware that as motorists become increasingly reliant on systems such as radar, it’s important to make sure that bikes aren’t forgotten. BMW recently expanded their commitment to the Connected Motorcycle Consortium, a multi-manufacturer group, also including Honda, KTM, Yamaha Suzuki and Triumph, which is developing a host of systems focused on the idea of vehicles communicating between themselves and being ‘aware’ of the other vehicles in their surroundings. The patent shows how even cheap, passive components that could easily be retrofitted to any bike could play a role in achieving that target.