I’m 72 years old, started riding motorcycles in Rome, Italy at the age of 14 (legal for any motorcycles up to 50 cc’s) and have been riding more or less continuously for 58 years now. Like most activities in our lives, the level of my engagement with motorcycling has ebbed a flowed a bit over the years, but mostly it has been my favorite and most engaging activity that gives me pleasure and, dare I say it?, defines me. I have one tattoo and will only ever have one tattoo and it sits of my upper left arm. It is a tattoo of my motorcycle club and the design of the tattoo was done by my daughter, Carolyn. I got the tattoo in 2000 when I was 46. I figured that by age 46 I pretty much knew what I cared about and I very much cared about motorcycling. I won’t waste time explaining why motorcycling means so much to me, so just take my word for it and convince yourself that anything someone does for 58 years, despite all the natural forces that push back against doing it beyond a certain age, must care.
I currently own two motorcycles (both BMW transverse twins), one to ride and one to provide guests (like my youngest son) a ride when they visit. I ride the spare every once in awhile through the neighborhood to keep it in tune. I try to ride as often as I can. Just this week I rode over to LaJolla since our car only fits 5 people and we are six with the kids visiting. And then today, since the kids are up at Disney for a few days with the car, I had to drive the bike over for my Gyrotronics session in the southern part of Escondido. I still enjoy riding (especially in this great San Diego weather) as much as I did when I was 16 and got my first big bike (a 1969 Triumph TR6-R 650 Tiger). Since then I have owned a vast number of helmets, since I have always ridden with a helmet. After all these years, in my garage on my motorcycle gear rack, I have probably 25 various helmets in sizes ranging from Child’s Small to XXXL. There are a number of brands from the cheapest to Schuberth (the best), Shoei and Arai helmets in many different colors and shapes. Primarily, these helmets are full-face flip-up helmets (some with and some without Bluetooth headphones built in), but I also have quite a few half-lids that are cooler on the hot days when a full-coverage helmet feels like having your head in a convection oven. To be honest, I have one Shuberth C5 full helmet and one Sena Cavalry half-lid, both with Bluetooth, that I choose any time I head out for a ride. I don’t use the Bluetooth for intercom with other riders, but I do use it to listen to music and theoretically to answer the phone while riding. I say theoretically, because there always seems to be some reason why the phone functionality doesn’t work…and I always just convince myself that its for the best since how safe can it be to talk on the phone while riding, right?
The point is, I am not looking for advancing the technology of my helmets and, indeed, cannot think of anything I would want to add to my helmet technology. Then today, my friend Steve, who wrote about motorcycle gadgets for years, sent me an investor deck for a new product called a “Haptic Helmet”. Naturally, that required some research. Haptic tech in helmets is picking up real momentum right now it seems. A haptic helmet uses vibration motors (or sometimes other tactile actuators) built into the helmet’s interior to give the wearer physical feedback through touch rather than sound or sight. They are commonly used for navigation (buzzes on the left or right side to signal turn directions, so riders/cyclists don’t have to glance at a screen), alerts for blind-spot hazards, incoming collisions, or vehicles approaching from behind to try to make motorcycling safer for the rider. You know haptics from your car’s lane keeper function when it shakes the driving wheel. The core idea is offloading information to the sense of touch so the eyes and ears stay free for the primary tasks, which can be useful in situations where visual or auditory attention is already maxed out, like riding a motorcycle in traffic.
The existing big players include Canyon’s “Stingr Smart” helmet, which just debuted and pairs audio and haptic alerts with the broader Canyon Predict system so you feel a warning before you’d visually notice a hazard. BMW’s older patent (haptic actuator ring inside the helmet) was aimed mainly at navigation with vibration location/frequency/amplitude conveying turn-by-turn information without needing a screen or audio cues that get lost in wind noise. That product, by a leader in the motorcycling industry, never made it to full production but the concept underpins a lot of what’s now shipping. Blind-spot haptics are the most mature use case. The Arc Vector’s “Origin” jacket (buzzing shoulder motors) pioneered this for road bikes years ago, and academic/DIY projects have validated it further with testing finding the large majority of users preferred vibration that increased in frequency as a hazard got closer. The core case for haptics over audio/visual is that warning lights sit outside your direct sightline when you’re focused on the road, and wind/engine noise can bury audio alerts while vibration cuts through both problems. For someone doing long highway stretches, a haptic blind-spot or lane-hazard system would be a genuinely useful safety layer, not just a gadget.
As a funny side-note for me personally, one of the haptic devices being recommended for use with these new helmets are haptic gloves. Claude is advising me that given the forearm/hand neuropathy I’ve been managing, haptic gloves or grip-based feedback systems (as opposed to helmet or jacket-based) might be worth avoiding or testing carefully since reduced sensation could dull how well I’d pick up on subtle vibration cues in the extremities, whereas helmet or torso-based haptics wouldn’t have that issue. What this makes me think is that I’ve managed to stay safe without haptics for 58 years of riding and I’m inclined to just stick with my existing low-tech, half-functioning Bluetooth helmets. That way, all I have to worry about is the age-old problem of helmet hair, which I’ve learned to handle over the years…at least without any safety hazard.