Bird Develops Skid Detection System

Skid detection is an important safety and compliance feature that has the potential to deliver significant security benefits to both riders and communities.

Ryan Fujiu – Chief Product Officer, Bird.

Los Angeles / California / USA

Major scooter-share company Bird has developed a skid detection system to help encourage safe and compliant e-scooter riding.

Skidding tyres can have several causes, the company said, including hazardous riding behaviour, excessive braking force and worn tyres or tyre tread. The system will help proactively alert its operations teams to any of these potential issues.

The underlying technology uses the Bird’s vehicle diagnostics and sensor processing capabilities, combined with an understanding of tyre physics, to determine if a skid has occurred. If a rider is either experiencing or performing an uncharacteristic amount of skids, the system sends an alert to its backend enabling quick responsive action.

“Skid detection is an important safety and compliance feature that has the potential to deliver significant security benefits to both riders and communities,” said Ryan Fujiu, chief product officer at Bird.

Excessive skidding that’s determined to be caused by poor behaviour will trigger a series of rider communications detailing the dangers of intentional excessive braking.

If necessary, Bird can revoke riding access to ensure community safety is respected. Skidding related to worn tyre treads, on the other hand, will activate a service inspection by the company’s operations team.

Bird scooters are operating in over 100 cities across Europe and North America, to the best of our knowledge, not yet in Australia. Bird was founded on 1st September 2017. According to Wikipedia, Bird’s latest funding round Series D back in 2019 of US$275 million (A$360 million) gave it an implied market capitalisation of US$2.8 billion (A$3.66 billion).

Most of this article was first published in micromobilitybiz.com (UK)