Luxury car maker Jaguar Land Rover is developing a range of new technologies that will use colours, sounds and touch inside the car to alert drivers to potential hazards and prevent accidents involving bicycles and motorbikes.

"Bike Sense", a concept technology developed at JLR’s advanced research centre in the UK involves sensors to detect the approach of other road users, and identifying them as bikes or motorbike. Bike Sense will then make the driver aware of the potential hazard before the driver sees it.

With nearly 19,000 cyclists killed or injured on UK roads each year, researchers are identifying the best warning colours and sounds to trigger a response from the driver to prevent accidents.

Rather than a generic warning icon or sound, which takes time for the driver’s brain to process, Bike Sense uses lights and sounds that will be associated with potential danger.

To help drivers understand the location of the bike is in relation to the car, the audio system will make the sound of a bell or horn, come through the speaker nearest the bike, so the driver immediately understands the direction the cyclist is coming from.

If a bicycle or motorbike is coming up the road behind the car, Bike Sense will detect if it is overtaking or coming past and the top of the car seat will extend to ‘tap’ the driver on the left or right shoulder, JLR said in a press release.

As the cyclist gets closer to the car, a matrix of LED lights on the window sills, dashboard and windscreen pillars will glow amber and then red as the bike approaches. The movement of these lights will also highlight the direction the bike is taking.

Dr Wolfgang Epple, Director of Research and Technology, JLR said, “Bike Sense takes us beyond the current technologies of hazard indicators and icons in wing mirrors, to optimising the location of light, sound and touch to enhance this intuition. This creates warnings that allow a faster cognitive reaction as they engage the brain’s instinctive responses.”

If the warnings are ignored and the accelerator is pressed, the accelerator pedal will vibrate or feel stiff, so the driver knows not to move the car forward.

To help prevent doors of parked vehicles being opened into the path of bikes, sounds and lights within will warn all passengers of an approaching vehicle. If someone continues to open the door, the door handle will light up, vibrate and buzz to warn of the danger.

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