The US Department of Transport has carried out a study which has revealed that in the US, modern car makers are making their vehicles safer for their drivers, at the expense of other road users – particularly motorcyclists.

The research was initiated in the US to try and find out why fatalities of other road users, not car drivers, have gone up in the US in the last 25 years. The research looked at pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, rather than motorcyclists, but it can be taken as red that motorcyclists will be suffering from the same problem.

US cyclist fatalities have gone up a staggering 42 percent in the past 25 years, to their highest level in 50 years while car fatalities have gone down. So whatever the car manufacturers are doing it's working for their own, but at the expense of other road users.

The crux of the matter is that stronger car chassis', bigger crumple zone front ends, enlarged wing mirrors and A pillars are all making the structure of the cars stronger in the event of an accident, but also inadvertently serving to make visibility out of said vehicles much worse. So, in a nutshell, drivers can no longer see out of their vehicles as well as they used to, so are just far more SMIDSY (Sorry Mate I Didn't See You) prone, and just less likely to spot anyone else on the road.

The Study was undertaken by the USDOT Volpe Centre, and shows that forward visibility of cars has decreased by as much as 58 percent over the last 25 years. They used cameras to create 360 degree 'blind zone ' maps to look at drivers' forward visibility, and discovered how much it had decreased since car designs of the 1990s.

The study only examined six different car models, so it is a select study, but the trend seems to be across the board in car design. Perhaps it is a nod to the advent of the self driving car where, in theory, the human driver's visibility will be of little consequence as the car will be using sensors to 'see' the road instead? Who knows, as AI advances steadily into every area of our lives, what's to come... 

Obviously this data is not from the UK but the US, so that may make a difference, but it does seem likely that the same issues will be relevant in the UK as the same car makes cross the pond, and the same trends in car manufacture abound.

Basically cars are getting pretty universally bigger and bigger, but the collision data in the UK does not follow that of the US, as regards motorcyclists. UK Department of Transport data over the same period as the US study, says that motorcycle fatalities were down 46 percent and serious injuries have decreased by 36%. Although there are other relevant factors to consider alongside the changes in car design, such as that motorcycle use has declined by 10% and perhaps motorcycles have also got safer, with better brakes and lights.

As any motorcyclist will tell you, the incidence of SMIDSY (Sorry Mate I Didn't See You) accidents is still there in spades, and cars do have blind spots, so the best thing any rider can do to mitigate this is to ride like nobody's watching, and be hyper vigilant to other vehicles in the vicinity. Also wear really good protective gear at all times in case the worst happens, and high vis to make sure that you can be easily spotted by other road users.

It will be interesting to see what the accident data reveals here in the UK as time goes by, and whether the same trends emerge over time, as they have in the US.
Are you a car driver as well as a motorcyclist? Have you noticed reduced visibility in your car? On your bike do you feel more vulnerable any wary of car drivers?

Any thoughts let us know at [email protected] or on Facebook.