Objective: Active safety systems, of which antilock braking is a prominent example, are going to play an important role to improve powered two-wheeler (PTW) safety. This paper presents a systematic review of the scientific literature on active safety for PTWs. The aim was to list all systems under development, identify knowledge gaps and recognize promising research areas that require further efforts. Methods: A broad search using “safety” as the main keyword was performed on Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar, followed by manual screening to identify eligible papers that underwent a full-text review. Finally, the selected papers were grouped by general technology type and analyzed via structured form to identify the following: specific active safety system, study type, outcome type, population/sample where applicable, and overall findings. Results: Of the 8,000 papers identified with the initial search, 85 were selected for full-text review and 62 were finally included in the study, of which 34 were journal papers. The general technology types identified included antilock braking system, autonomous emergency braking, collision avoidance, intersection support, intelligent transportation systems, curve warning, human machine interface systems, stability control, traction control, and vision assistance. Approximately one third of the studies considered the design and early stage testing of safety systems (n. 22); almost one fourth (n.15) included evaluations of system effectiveness. Conclusions: Our systematic review shows that a multiplicity of active safety systems for PTWs were examined in the scientific literature, but the levels of development are diverse. A few systems are currently available in the series production, whereas other systems are still at the level of early-stage prototypes. Safety benefit assessments were conducted for single systems, however, organized comparisons between systems that may inform the prioritization of future research are lacking. Another area of future analysis is on the combined effects of different safety systems, that may be capitalized for better performance and to maximize the safety impact of new technologies.

A riding simulator study ( n = 14) was conducted in order to test the sensitivity of performance measures, subjective ratings as well as physiological measures in controlled variations of rider workload. In a second study ( n = 15), these parameters were used in order to assess the effects of different secondary tasks. The task of operating an on‐bike information system led to the highest workload, for example, indicated by deteriorated lane keeping and higher subjective ratings compared with a simple visual, an auditory and no secondary task at all. The third study ( n = 18) focused on the effects of eyes‐off road while riding using the method of occlusion. This revealed that the participants felt safe to black out the scenery quite often and long. Periods of occlusion were related to a higher mean velocity and a tendency to ride more on the left side of the lane compared with riding with enabled projection.

Personal transport is of high importance in our society and the 2020 pandemic situation has reinforced this situation. At the same time, transport contributes to local emissions, which need to be reduced in the face of climate change. Changing from vehicles with internal combustion engines to light electric vehicles could be one promising approach. Therefore, we need to understand mobility patterns and attitudes towards E-mobility to create sustainable transport solutions that will be broadly accepted. An online survey with N = 432 participants across Europe was conducted. The majority of respondents came from Germany, followed by Italy, Austria and Sweden. Generally, cars are the main vehicle for personal transport. PTWs are used for commuting as well as leisure activity. Driving experience, easier parking and lower maintenance compared to cars are major reasons to choose a PTW. No differences between younger and elderly participants were observed. E-PTWs are primarily avoided due to high costs, range anxiety and expected problems with the charging infrastructure. To support sustainable mobility, these obstacles need to be overcome. One aspect is definitely the provision of better charging infrastructure or electric vehicles with increased range. Hence, given typical trip lengths and purposes, it might seem equally important to tackle prejudices and increase the knowledge about E-mobility with all its potential benefits in the population.

Whenever driving simulators are used in research and development, to a certain extent the generalizability of the gained results is subject to discussion. Typically, a simulator gets validated in a rather effortful and complex process to prove the adequacy of the use of this specific simulator as research tool for a given research question. Traditionally, there is a differentiation between a simulator’s physical validity and its behavioral validity. Whilst the first focusses on the simulator’s behavior and the presence of specific cues and operating elements, the latter focusses on the driver’s perception and consequently behavior. Furthermore, the degree of accordance between vehicle and simulator forms a category of validity, namely, absolute, and relative validity. Whilst absolute validity describes an absolute numerical accordance of measurable dimensions between vehicle and simulator (e.g., certain forces, accelerations), relative validity describes a correlational accordance. Independent of the addressed dimension, simulator validation is a highly complex process, which is specific to the respective research question for which the simulator gets validated (e.g., training race riders vs. assessing distraction caused by human-machine interfaces, HMI). Regarding single-track vehicle simulator concepts for which there is less experience from previous research, a rather broad validation procedure would be a useful tool to assess a simulator’s overall characteristics and therefore to assess its potential fields of application on a wider basis. This paper addresses this gap and presents such a methodological validation approach applied to motorcycle riding simulators. The main assumption of the method is that complex riding tasks can be divided into smaller units that allow for discrimination of specific rider input characteristics, the so-called minimal scenarios. These minimal scenarios are riding tasks such as ‘starting from standstill’ or ‘initiating a curve at constant velocity’. Furthermore, it is assumed that minimal scenarios can be reorganized to more complex riding tasks. This is intended to describe the variety of potential applications with a necessary minimum of elementary tasks to reduce the validation effort for a global assessment of the simulator’s capabilities. This more generic result can also be regarded as a limitation. The proposed empirical evidence from participant studies on a static, a dynamic motorcycle riding simulator as well as a reference ride on a real motorcycle suggests that the validation approach can be beneficial.

Whenever driving simulators are used in research and development, to a certain extent the generalizability of the gained results is subject to discussion. Typically, a simulator gets validated in a rather effortful and complex process in order to prove the adequacy of the use of this specific simulator as research tool for a given research question. Since decades, there is plenty of research regarding the methods to validate simulators mainly from the automotive domain (e.g., Blaauw, 1982; Blana, 1996). Traditionally, there is a differentiation between a simulator’s physical validity and its behavioral validity. Whilst the first focusses on the simulator’s behavior and the presence of specific cues and operating elements, the latter focusses on the driver’s perception and consequently behavior. Furthermore, the degree of accordance between vehicle and simulator forms a category of validity, namely, absolute, and relative validity. Whilst absolute validity describes an absolute numerical accordance of measurable dimensions between vehicle and simulator (e.g., certain forces, accelerations), relative validity describes a correlational accordance. Independent of the addressed dimension, simulator validation is a highly complex process, which is specific to the respective research question for which the simulator gets validated (e.g., training race riders vs. assessing distraction caused by human-machine interfaces, HMI). Regarding single-track vehicle simulator concepts for which there is less experience from previous research (e.g., Cossalter, Lot, Massaro, & Sartori, 2011; Grottoli, Mulder, & Happee, 2022), a rather broad validation procedure could be a useful tool in order to assess a simulator’s overall characteristics and therefore to assess its potential fields of application on a wider basis. This paper presents such a methodological validation approach applied to motorcycle riding simulators. The main assumption of the method is that complex riding tasks can be divided into smaller units that allow for discrimination of specific rider input characteristics, the so-called minimal scenarios. These minimal scenarios are riding tasks such as ‘starting from standstill’ or ‘initiating a curve at constant velocity’. Furthermore, it is assumed that minimal scenarios can be reorganized to more complex riding tasks. This is intended to describe the variety of potential applications with a necessary minimum of elementary tasks in order to reduce the validation effort for a global assessment of the simulator’s capabilities (Hammer, Pleß, Will, Neukum, & Merkel, 2021). This more generic result can also be regarded as a limitation. The proposed empirical evidence from participant studies on a static, a dynamic motorcycle riding simulator as well as a reference ride on a real motorcycle suggests that the validation approach can be beneficial.