Protect the Rider Today; Develop a Safer Rider for Tomorrow
Rich Hanowski, PhD Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer Motorcycle Safety Solutions, Inc. (USA) Motorcycle Safety Solutions Asia (M) Sdn. Bhd. (Malaysia)
Motorcycles are an essential form of everyday transportation in Thailand—but motorcycle riders also bear an extraordinary share of the country's road-safety burden. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Thailand had an estimated 18,218 road traffic deaths in 2021, approximately 50 every day. Motorcycle users accounted for 83.8% of these deaths, while people aged 15–29 were the most affected age group. Thailand's estimated road traffic fatality rate of 25.4 deaths per 100,000 population remains one of the highest in Asia (World Health Organization [WHO], 2023).
A Transportation Necessity—and a “Wicked Problem”
For young riders in Thailand, however, motorcycle safety cannot be viewed simply as a matter of choosing whether or not to ride. Particularly outside Bangkok and Thailand's major urban centers, motorcycles are deeply embedded in everyday mobility—including transportation to and from school.
A peer-reviewed study using Thailand National Statistical Office data collected in 2016 examined school commuting among 25,461 Thai students between the ages of 9 and 18. While Bangkok students used a broader mix of transportation modes, the researchers found that students in other provinces primarily traveled to school by motorcycle (Chairassamee et al., 2024).
This creates an important reality for motorcycle safety. For many young people and their families, the motorcycle is not simply a recreational vehicle or even a transportation preference. It is a practical means of reaching school, work, family and community.
Simply telling young people not to ride—or attempting to eliminate motorcycle use without providing realistic transportation alternatives—does not address the underlying mobility need.
This is part of what makes motorcycle safety a classic “wicked problem.” Rider behavior, transportation access, economics, infrastructure, education, technology and public policy are interconnected. There is no single intervention capable of solving the problem.
How can we make the riding that is already occurring safer?
Closing the Rider Education Gap
That question becomes even more important when considering how riders learn. A major study by the Thailand Accident Research Center (TARC) investigated 1,000 motorcycle crashes across all regions of Thailand between 2016 and 2020. Among riders involved in these crashes, 41% did not hold a motorcycle license, while more than 90% reported learning to ride from family or friends or teaching themselves (Thailand Accident Research Center [TARC], 2022).
The TARC research also points to the importance of hazard awareness and collision avoidance. Rider perception failure was identified as the most frequent primary rider-related contributing factor, occurring in 49% of investigated cases, while no collision-avoidance maneuver was performed in 48% of cases. Among riders who held a motorcycle license, 50% performed no collision-avoidance maneuver (TARC, 2022).
There is evidence that structured rider education can make a meaningful difference. In a retrospective cohort study of 6,213 Thai motorcyclists, 3,250 trained riders were compared with 2,963 untrained controls. Among the training programs evaluated, a 15-hour license course covering knowledge, riding skills and hazard perception was associated with a 30% lower risk of motorcycle-related injury (relative risk = 0.70, 95% CI: 0.53-0.92). The researchers suggested that hazard-perception skills might be an important contributor to training effectiveness (Woratanarat et al., 2013). 2
Putting the Idea to the Test in Lop Buri
Against this backdrop, Motorcycle Safety Solutions conducted a naturalistic study of teenage motorcycle riders attending three schools in Lop Buri, Thailand. Conducted over one school semester (May-September 2026), the program followed 25 students during their normal motorcycle commuting, recording more than 500 real-world trips covering over 3,000 kilometers.
The program explored a simple but important idea:
Can technology both protect a young rider today and help develop a safer rider for tomorrow?
Using the RideHawk™ rider protection and risk intelligence platform, the study evaluated riding behavior during everyday school commuting. RideHawk™ combines active protection—including forward collision warning, rider-behavior analytics, and crash detection and emergency alerts—with AI-powered rider safety scoring and personalized training feedback.
Overall riding performance was encouraging. Across the three participating schools, mean RideHawk™ safety scores ranged from 83.4 to 88.6 (out of 100). The riding data also identified specific opportunities for improvement, including maintaining safer following distances, reducing aggressive riding, avoiding extremely close encounters with vehicles ahead, and maintaining safer speeds.
Measuring Rider Knowledge
Technology alone, however, is only part of the solution. The RideHawk™ program also incorporated app-based education derived from Thailand's Department of Land Transport training materials, providing students with 24 active-learning modules and quizzes designed to build foundational road-safety knowledge.
At the conclusion of the semester, students participating in the RideHawk™ program completed a DLT-based road-safety knowledge questionnaire. Their performance was compared with a cohort of students from the participating high schools who were not part of the RideHawk™ program.
With the final questionnaire response included, the complete dataset comprised 25 RideHawk participants and 78 students in the comparison cohort. RideHawk participants averaged 16.8 correct answers out of 25 (67.2%; median = 18), compared with 15.0 (60.0%; median = 15) for the comparison cohort.
Because students were drawn from three participating schools, the primary inferential analysis used a linear mixed-effects model with group as a fixed effect and school as a random effect. RideHawk participation was associated with an estimated 2.17-point higher knowledge score on the 25-item assessment (estimate = 2.166, SE = 0.929, t = 2.333, p = .022), a statistically significant difference after accounting for clustering by school.
These findings also demonstrate the feasibility of combining app-based rider education with the RideHawk safety platform, providing a mechanism for delivering road-safety education while supporting riders during their everyday travel.
From Active Protection to Continuous Rider Development
These findings point toward a broader vision for motorcycle safety.
RideHawk™ can provide active protection when a rider encounters risk on the road—but protection at the moment of risk is only one part of the opportunity. The same platform can also support the development of the rider over time.
Real-world riding data can identify individual risk patterns. Personalized feedback can help riders recognize and understand those behaviors. And accessible digital education can help build the foundational road-safety knowledge that many novice riders may not otherwise receive.
The significantly higher road-safety knowledge scores observed among RideHawk participants, after accounting for school-level clustering, provide encouraging evidence for this second dimension of the platform. Rather than viewing rider training as a one-time event, connected technology creates the possibility of supporting riders continuously during the months and years in which their skills, knowledge and riding habits are developing.
Protect the rider today; develop a safer rider for tomorrow.
That principle is at the heart of Motorcycle Safety Solutions' approach to RideHawk™. Motorcycle dependence cannot simply be engineered out of communities where motorcycles fulfill an essential transportation need. Meaningful progress instead requires complementary interventions that recognize the realities of how people actually travel.
By bringing together active safety technology, real-world risk intelligence, personalized feedback and accessible rider education, RideHawk™ is designed to address two parts of this wicked problem simultaneously: reducing the risks riders face today while helping them develop the knowledge and skills to become safer, more capable riders for the future.
References
Chairassamee, N., Chancharoenchai, K., & Saraithong, W. (2024). Getting there: How commuting time and distance impact students' health. PLOS ONE, 19(12), e0314687. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314687
Thailand Accident Research Center. (2022). Motorcycle accident investigation: Year 2016-2020. Asian Institute of Technology. https://tarc.or.th/research/142
World Health Organization. (2023). Global status report on road safety 2023. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240086517
Woratanarat, P., Ingsathit, A., Chatchaipan, P., & Suriyawongpaisal, P. (2013). Safety riding program and motorcycle-related injuries in Thailand. Accident Analysis & Prevention, 58, 115–121. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2013.05.001