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BMW, Honda and Yamaha Start Developing Intelligent Bikes that Communicate with Each Other

Motorcycle and road safety are taking an interesting step with the three-way agreement BMW Motorrad, Honda Motor Co. Ltd. and Yamaha Motor Co. Ltd. recently reached. The three big motorcycle industry names will establish a consortium named the Connected Motorcycle Consortium (CMC).
BMW, Honda and Yamaha working together for new safety-related technologies 1 photo
Photo: BMW
The main goal of the new organization is developing and implementing Cooperative-Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) in the new generations of motorcycles. The Cooperative-Intelligent Transportation Systems mean that certain electronic gadgets that come with the bike will be able to interact with each other.

BMW's ConnectedDrive is probably the first thing that comes to mind, but the C-ITS will involve only vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication in the early development stages. The first C-ITS-enabled vehicles are expected to be on the streets in 2020.

GPS navigators could talk to each other

Gadgets such as GPS navigators could be enhanced with C-ITS so the bikes could communicate with riders ahead and learn about traffic problems, possibly changing routes for faster rides and all.

Road hazards could also be signaled to other vehicles. Imagine riding around a blind turn and running onto wet asphalt or sand, and the bike's traction control data being the trigger to send out an alert to nearby bikes.

The possibilities such a technology opens are to be explored in the future, as the Connected Motorcycle Consortium will get things going. To some older guys, having that much technology aboard the bike might sound overkill, and we are not huge fans of having computers doing the riding for us, either.

Still, as the whole motorcycling world is changing fast, we are positive that riders will start to embrace such technologies. As to where will this lead, the debate could last forever. Might do an editorial on it, too, like this old one on motorcycle electronics.
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