Honda Crash-Detection System

A few motorcycles already offer emergency response in case of an accident, but Honda is working to refine that process, by determining if the rider is up and alert.

Crash detection systems that can automatically tell if you’ve come off your bike and call for help are already available, but Honda is working on a smarter variation on the idea that’s better able to tell if you’re really hurt or not.

Several companies, including Triumph and BMW, already have automatic emergency call systems as options on their motorcycles, using various sensors either on the bike itself or in your cell phone to work out if you’ve had a crash and calling for help if certain parameters are met. Apple’s latest iPhones and watches even have their own crash-detection systems. But Honda’s latest design, revealed in a new patent application from the company, is more intelligent.

Honda’s system will be able to know if the bike and rider are upright and therefore determine that there isn’t an issue.

The system, like others, uses sensors that are already present on many bikes, as well as your own cell phone, but Honda’s setup adds a helmet-mounted Bluetooth headset into the mix and takes information from all three devices—the phone, the headset and the bike—to decide whether you need help. The first step is a simple tilt sensor in the bike itself. It gets triggered if it senses a lean angle that goes beyond the norms of day-to-day riding, essentially starting the process as soon as the bike falls over. But since you probably don’t want an ambulance showing up after embarrassingly dropping your bike in a parking lot, there’s more to it than that.

In this scenario, the system would recognize that the bike is down but that the rider is upright determined by the relationship between the helmet communication system, the smartphone, and the bike.

At this stage, most systems use shock sensors and algorithms to decide whether there’s been an impact that might be dangerous, and then start by calling the rider’s own phone or triggering a warning on the phone, allowing time to cancel the call to emergency services before it’s made. Honda wants to take away that step and be able to work out if you’re okay without it. Its solution to the problem is remarkably simple, using the communication between the phone, the bike and the helmet headset to deduce whether you’re lying motionless on the ground or walking around cursing your bad luck.

In this case, the system would understand that the helmet and phone are adjacent to each other, but on the ground. It would then likely determine if it should call for help.

Using local communication like Bluetooth, the unit on the bike can tell the position of your phone and the helmet headset in relation to itself, and how the phone and helmet are positioned in relation to each other. If that relationship shows you’re moving around and your head (the helmet) is above the phone and the sensor on the bike, and the bike’s ignition gets turned off after the accident, then it’s reasonably clear that you’re not lying unconscious on the ground, so the automatic call to emergency services isn’t made. If, in contrast, the sensors show that your helmet and phone are on the ground and not moving, then the call can be triggered.

Here, the system would try and understand why the phone and the helmet com and the bike are all scattered, a sign that it should automatically call for help.

The system is actually more complex than that, checking the speed prior to the crash, whether the distances between the bike, helmet and phone are changing over time, and even whether the phone or helmet are trapped under the bike and taking those things into account in the decision-making process. There’s still a check before the emergency call is made, allowing you to cancel it, but with no response from the rider the system is better positioned to make a judgement and even to pass information about your state on to medics before they arrive.

The system is still at the patent stage, so don’t expect to be able to buy it immediately, but it gives a clue as to how the interconnected devices that so many modern bikes already use can be given a second job in the event of an accident.

Check out our inventory of our Hondas with built in rider-aids.