Due to the high number of road accidents recorded in all the streets of Europe especially in recent years, the problem of road safety appears to be a topic of primary importance with the aim to protect as best as possible the driver that needs to use a vehicle on the street. In order to better study this type of problem and find solutions to enhance the security and the driving ability, one of the most effective tools is surely be the driving simulator.
Thanks to the last high-tech systems presented it is possible to study the behavior of the driver when it is personally involved in making extreme maneuvers or emergency.
However, despite the great interest shown in respect of road safety, little is done to the training of those who must drive a vehicle safely and in particular this applies to motorcycles. This is because a driving simulator motorcycle is a highly complex system that requires cutting-edge technologies, with which it is possible to reproduce the actual environment in a confined space, controlled, secure in order to recreate the real sensations in the driver that is immersed in the virtual reality.
The first model of motorcycle driving simulator was introduced in Japan in 1995 although with obvious and significant limitations intrinsically linked to the concept of the prototype. The challenge of creating a driving simulator in which you can reproduce the motorcycle dynamics as real as possible has been accepted by Motorcycle Dynamics Research Group of the University of Padua in 2003 presenting its first prototype, the SafeBike.
This project has involved an enormous amount of resources, from those intellectual to economic ones, with the result being, in 2010, it was one of the most advanced motorcycle driving simulators in the world.
With the MDRG's simulator it was possible to extend the use of motorcycles in total safety even to inexperienced driver that for the first time you approach this reality. With studies devoted specifically to the study of the reactions of driving it was possible to observe the behavior of the driver in dealing with the special maneuvers and emergency situations.
In this way you can get feedback on the effectiveness of new devices driving the motorcycle with which vehicles are equipped. So in addition to study and analyze the dynamic behavior of the motorcycle in the desired conditions with the simulator is also possible to observe the driving reactions exhibited by the driver. All this has the purpose of increasing safety and sensitivity in motorcycle driving.

In order to have a high training capacity, the driving simulator it must be able to transmit to the user sensations similar to those experienced during the guidance of a real motorcycle. For this reason the SafeBike is able to generate the movement of roll, pitch, yaw rate, lateral movement and the movement of the steering. The movement of the structure is to be inserted in a graphics context that can elicit adequate visual sensations and the same applies to the auditory sensations. All this contributes to recreate the feeling of acceleration into the driver as similar as possible to the real driving conditions.
The SafeBike consists on: a structure (simulacrum of the vehicle) for the driver; a drive system to give the structure the appropriate acceleration; a code that allows the real-time simulation of the dynamic behavior of the motorcycle, a sensors system to monitor the actions of the driver; a system of visual reproduction to represent the scenario of the motion from the point of view of the driver; All this is managed by two computers which acquire the sensor data, run the simulation program of the dynamic behavior motorcycle, manage the visual and auditory reproduction apparatus and control the actuators.

From recent studies carried out in the latest versions of the simulator has been possible to observe and analyze the behavior of novice users, and do not, under normal use in urban and suburban. For this type of study it is used the software product of the French Eca Faros, great expert in the field of simulation of vehicles to which was integrated the mathematical model developed from MDRG. In this way it is possible to have the whole telemetry acquisition of all channels of the system and observe, study and interpret the physical behavior recorded with a high-definition camcorder that record the whole space where the structure is placed.

With the same simulator is also possible to perform studies aimed at racing competitions. Because it is possible to derive the geometric and inertial properties of a motorcycle you can enter the data into the software simulator and study its behavior on the track thanks to the software designed specifically. It is thus able to find the best settings of the parameters in a quick and effective way.