Safety for motorcyclists (and bicyclists): provide an “intuitive” warning of your distance to other drivers with this brake-light-on-a-stick proposal!

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Background:

Cars, trucks, motorcycles, and bicycles all share the roadways.However, drivers often entirely fail to notice bicyclists and motorcyclists. One study even suggests that drivers may often literally tune them out entirely: https://www.google.com/search?q=car+drivers+don%27t+notice+bicycles+study.

For this particular idea, let’s focus on motorcycles, although the same general principle will also apply to bicycles.

The Issue:

At night, a motorcycle appears at a distance as a single point of light—a headlight or taillight—while a car or truck appears as two or more lights (Figure 1).

Fig. 1: Left: a car has several brake lights (and usually two headlights on the front). Right: a bike or motorcycle typically has one headlight and one brake light.

Most cars are roughly the same width, so the degree of separation of lights gives the viewer an idea of how far away a vehicle is (Figure 2).

Fig. 2: When viewing a car’s taillights, it’s obvious that “lights are close together” means the car is far away, and “lights are separated” means “car is getting close.” For a bicycle or motorcycle, there is always only one light.

This “intuitive understanding of distance” process is totally dependent on 1) the viewer having an idea of approximately how wide a car is and 2) there being two (or more) taillights to view.

Proposal:

To make it obvious to other drivers how far away a motorcycle is, let’s just add a second taillight (and, optionally, headlight).

If we separate the old and new taillights by approximately one-car-width of distance, then other drivers should intuitively understand how far away the motorcycle is (Figure 3).

Fig. 3: By adding a second taillight (indicated by the arrow), the distance of the motorcycle can now be easily inferred. 

A car is usually approximately 5.5–6 feet wide, so we’ll just need to make sure that the second taillight is about this much higher than the original light.

PROS: Should increase road safety for bicyclists and motorcyclists.

CONS: Adding a six-foot protruding post above a motorcycle might negatively impact both aerodynamics (and mileage) and convenience.