Light Insight Trial (LiT): Smart bike lights data and road safety

Historically, insights related to the road safety issues faced by people who ride bicycles in Victoria has been limited. This has, in turn, left a gap in knowledge and limited evidence to inform road safety improvements. In response, a team of road safety experts, researchers and cyclists are investigating whether the use of smart bicycle lights can address this gap and therefore improve safety for this group of road users.

To help gather insights on how to improve road safety for cyclists, In 2021 an innovative Light Insights Trial (LiT) was launched as a partnership between the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), See.Sense, iMove CRC and Deakin University. 1,000 cyclists from all abilities were specially selected to participate in LiT over 12 months and were provided with See.Sense ACE patented rear bike light. The AI-Enabled sensor technology within the lights records data on bike movements, speeds, crashes, routes and also the road surface, which is automatically pushed into the cloud by connecting to the See.Sense mobile app. The participants can also use the app to report near miss locations, close passes, pot holes as well as making infrastructure requests. 

In the first 6 months of the trial participants have cycled over 45,000km, which is a saving of over 232 tonnes of carbon and their rides have collected over 107 billion sensor readings. The data is being fed to research partners at Deakin University for analysis with the support of iMove CRC, and evaluations are due in Autumn 2022.

Not only are the lights helping to improve the visibility of participants, but the data will reveal insights to help improve safety. The insights will help to predict risk hotspots and has the potential to proactively prevent collisions, with targeted infrastructure improvements also helping to inform future policy changes.

Liz Cairns, Transport Accident Commission CEO said:

“We pride ourselves on exploring new and innovative ways to improve road safety in Victoria, and this Australian-first trial is a truly global initiative aimed at better understanding what people who ride bikes experience on our roads.

The trial will involve a diverse group of participants, allowing us to understand how many different types of people ride, and what more we can look at doing to better protect riders in Victoria.”

To find out how See.Sense technology and data services can help with your vision zero targets, local cycling Infrastructure/cycle network plans and highway maintenance, please email team@seesense.cc and a member of our team will be in touch.