Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/842139
FEATURE BOSCH MOTORCYCLE TECHNOLOGIES P122 time? Maybe countries that tend to put monetary gains over the public's well-being or even happiness could infiltrate the technology? "I don't see it," Cosyns says. "Besides, it's technically easier to hide behind a bush and laser a pass- ing vehicle to measure your speed. But as the saying goes, what's not possible today, might be possible tomorrow." Bosch North American represen- tative, Tony Szczotka, added his take on the question. "Yes. people are concerned about the Big Brother question," Szczotka says. "But all the Bosch employees involved in the Two-Wheeler and Powersports unit (2WP) are themselves motorcycle riders and passionate about motor- cycling. We ourselves want to make riding safer but without taking the fun out of it." Over the past 10 years, V2X standards have been set by the Car- 2-Car Communication Consortium, a foundation where many of the main suppliers and manufacturers join different task forces to develop technical proposals which get sent to standardization bodies (non-tech people) for certification. They all then follow these standards to iensure that the V2X hardware communicates with each other. VW, BMW, Daimler, Continen- tal, Bosch, AutoTalk, Cohda Wireless and many motorcycle OEMs have been involved early in the process. When I prodded Szczotka with what's coming next, he wouldn't give up any specific secrets but did elude with, "Connectivity will be the key—the ability to connect to your smartphones, connecting riders to the cloud. That will become a grow- ing trend." Dr. Yildirim also hinted that future V2X Bosch hardware might contain, "Further environmental sensing com- ponents like surround sensing, radar and cameras." Radar on my crotch rocket, perhaps? AN EXCITING TIME AHEAD N o one can fully predict what the future will bring, but it is fun to guess after seeing these anti-colli- sion vehicle prototypes first hand. I can imagine a world where all our vehicles are so well informed about their surroundings, we'll start seeing our speed limits grow higher. Or maybe future fender-bender inves- tigations get reduced to an officer downloading the data from each vehicle to a smartpad to see what just happened during the accident, with no need to pull out the orange roller to measure the length of a skid mark. "The data clearly shows this was your fault, ma'am." While it's fun to daydream about all the positive uses these truly wonderful Bosch technologies could bring into our lives, I just hope that one possible future doesn't mean an increased feeling of never feeling true privacy. Driving our cars and riding our motorbikes have always been regarded as an activity we do for a sense of freedom. I hope generations to come will remain diligent when accelerating into the future to protect our ability to break a speed limit every now and then, and have a fighting chance to get away with it. CN Mark asking Jose what the Bosch proving ground lap record is and if the system will allow him to break it.