Motorcycle App Helps You Ride Faster, Turn Sharper, Brake Harder 148
Hugh Pickens writes "Alexander George writes about a new app that takes the data from a smartphone's accelerometers, GPS, and inclinometer to plot information for braking force, lean angles, speed, and on-track location onto Google Maps to shave precious milliseconds off each lap time in motorcycle races. Race Sense is designed to be a useful tool for someone who races for a living and a very fun toy for those who just like to brag about what lean angle they got at their ride day, and what top speed they reached down the main straight. Australian Grand Prix motorcycle road racer Anthony West provided much of the R&D that went into tweaking the app. 'With sponsorship's so hard to find and I need another way to survive. I spent some of my own money developing it with an Italian guy who also likes to ride himself, and who writes programs,' says West who designed Race Sense to fulfill the needs of a genuine MotoGP racer. 'Sometimes it's one second [separating] 20 people. If you adjust one little thing thinking about something in one corner you can lose four places.'"
Slashvertisement & Impending lawsuit (Score:5, Informative)
Really? A plug for a paid app? I feel like you're trolling me slashdot. The only possible reason I can see to post this is as prologue to an American lawsuit the first time a user dies using this app on a highway.
On a similar note, perhaps a story about the lawsuit against Strava [bicycleretailer.com] would be more appropriate? A free cycling gps app that has the ability to ghost race yourself, your friends, and strangers was sued for negligence when a user broke the laws of the road trying to win a virtual race and was killed in traffic. See what I did there? A piece of free software, most people own a bicycle, tricky legal questions arising from technology, more than just an add.
But hey, what do I know? I'm no Samzenpus!
Re:"If you adjust one little thing" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This will probably kill people. (Score:4, Informative)
No, racebikes don't have speedos. Anyways a speedo has nothing to do with overrevving, if you're concerned at that you should be looking at the tachometer, not the speedometer.
Racers (at least motorcycle racers, I donno about cars) don't think in terms of "Ok next corner is a 75mph corner". They think in gears, as in "This is a third-gear corner and I should be at 7000 rpm when I begin my drive out of the corner"