The chances of being injured on the road are greater when you don’t have the protective shell and safety features of a car to shield you. In fact, Bosch—one of the biggest names in motoring safety—says the risk of death is 20 times higher when you figure in a crash while riding a motorbike as opposed to a car.
That’s a troubling fact, but again, not one that’s entirely surprising. Naturally, being in the safety business, Bosch saw an opportunity to do something about it.
To help give riders more of a fighting chance in the event of a serious mishap, the company developed Help Connect. Essentially, this feature is an emergency call system for motorbikes that uses a bike’s stability control inertial sensors and an “intelligent crash algorithm” to detect accidents before proceeding to transmit vital information—including rider location and medical data—to emergency services via smartphone. You can even let the feature automatically contact loved ones following an incident.
“If the accident is severe and the rider fails to respond, emergency services are immediately directed to the scene,” Bosch says. “As smartphones are generally carried close to the body, riders who have been in an accident can be quickly located even if they were thrown off their vehicle in the crash.”
The company added that it ran around 18 crash tests to analyze specific kinds of motorcycle accidents to demonstrate Help Connect’s capabilities, and adds that it should be pretty straightforward to install since it doesn’t require additional control units.
Bosch’s Help Connect feature will initially be offered to German customers. Is this a feature that would come in handy in our setting? What do you think?
