Jaguar Land Rover’s Virtual Backseat Driver Could Stop You Hitting Cyclists

Jaguar Land Rover’s Bike Sense system uses sound, lights, and touch to warn drivers of nearby cyclists. Jaguar Land Rover

Jaguar Land Rover has unveiled a research system that could make sure collisions between Range Rovers and cyclists are a distant memory. “Bike Sense” is a new kind of active safety system, combining sight, sound, and touch to tell the driver not just that a potential hazard exists, but what and where it is. Instead of a small flashing icon in the side mirror or a hard to interpret beep offered by current systems, the driver gets blasted with the sound of a bicycle bell, red and yellow LEDs, and a physical tap on the shoulder.

Active safety technologies, which detect and warn drivers about hazards, are increasingly common, especially as more and more cars come stuffed with cameras and radars. These systems are great for getting into tight parking spaces, spotting little kids running across the street, and knowing when there’s someone in your blind spot. But it’s not always easy to understand what, exactly, your car is telling you to watch out for. Blind spot monitoring systems, for example, usually rely on a small icon or light on the side view mirror, but don’t offer context such as what kind of vehicle is there, or how close it is. That leaves the driver to notice the light, interpret it, check the blind spot, and decide what to do.

“If you can bypass that action, so go straight from sensation to action, rather than having to perceive and consider what to do, then you’re gonna create a system that allows drivers to think and act faster,” says Lee Skrypchuk, who leads human machine interface research for Jaguar Land Rover and helped develop Bike Sense.

If you’re about to open the door and smack a cyclist, the handle will buzz to warn you. Jaguar Land Rover

The goal of Bike Sense is to create a new interface that communicates the nature and seriousness of risks outside the vehicle. The bicycle bell warning is played from the speaker nearest the hazard. The LEDs that cover the window sills, dashboard, and windshield pillars display a mix of green, yellow, and red, based on how close a cyclist is to the car. The “tap on the shoulder” is a haptic device in the top corners of the driver’s seat: A buzz on the left means watch out on the left. If you’re about to open the door and smack a cyclist, the handle buzzes to warn you. It’s like having a backseat driver keeping you up to speed on everything you might knock over and send to the hospital.

Like with a backseat driver, there’s a thin line between helpful advice and just being annoying. Sounding the alarm anytime you’re within a few yards of something can be totally overwhelming, dunking you in a sea of never-ending beeps that make it harder, not easier, to concentrate and drive safely. Finding that balance is a big focus for Jaguar land Rover’s research, Skrypchuk says. The car must get better at understanding the likelihood of a collision, so it can prioritize what the driver needs to be aware of. One potential approach is pulling info from the navigation system: If the driver’s headed left, he should be more aware of a cyclist coming up on the left than one on the right.

The mix of red, yellow, and green LED lights indicates where a cyclist is in relation to the car. Jaguar Land Rover

Bike Sense is just the latest moderately outlandish technology Jaguar Land Rover has shown off recently, including a virtual imaging system that makes the hood of the car effectively transparent, a 3D instrument cluster, and gesture controls.

This project, from an automaker that sells fewer than 500,000 vehicles a year, and is still in the research phase, won’t make a difference to the vast majority of cyclists hit and doored by people in other kind of cars. Protecting all cyclists requires changing laws and infrastructure to slow drivers down and make room for others on the road. But “technology that places responsibility on motorists and their cars is important,” says Mikael Colville-Andersen, CEO of cycling-focused urban design firm Copenhagenize Design Co. “Any advancement that places the responsibility where it belongs is welcome.”