More Safety for Vulnerable Road Users: Continental Develops Easy-to-Recognize Jacket

Frankfurt, Germany/Toulouse, France, October 25, 2022. Continental has joined forces with the outdoor clothing specialist Urban Circus to develop a highly Detectable Jacket that offers cyclists and pedestrians a new dimension of safety on the road. As the daylight hours shrink, vulnerable road users like cyclists and pedestrians become more difficult to spot by the human eye and vehicles alike. In comparison to conventional high-visibility jackets, the Detectable Jacket is much better recognizable to the human eye. It is also up to twice more visible to LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and camera sensors of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), which constantly monitor the vehicles' surroundings. For this solution, the partners have bundled their competencies – Urban Circus its expertise in outdoor clothing that protects against darkness, wind and rain, and Continental its experience with vehicle sensors – and developed a safe, stylish jacket that is suitable for everyday use.

“Our ‘Vision Zero’ – zero fatalities, zero injuries, zero crashes – not only includes automobile users, but also focuses especially on vulnerable road users. With the Detectable Jacket, a joint innovation from Continental’s own development and production service provider Continental Engineering Services and Urban Circus, the outdoor wear specialist, we are moving one further step closer to making urban traffic safer for VRUs,” Eric Vincelot, Head of Continental Engineering Services (CES) France says.

The special arrangement of fluorescent and reflective inserts in the patented Urban-RPrint^® technology fabric used for the Detectable Jacket is detected by on-board cameras and LiDAR systems faster and more reliably. To the eyes of the ADAS-sensors, the Detectable Jacket is up to twice more visible than conventional high-visibility vests. Accordingly, the system can intervene faster and better, brake or even stop completely. The size and position of the fabric inserts were chosen so that the sensors can directly detect the silhouette of a cyclist or pedestrian. At the same time, the risk of dazzling the sensors and cameras was minimized. In addition, glass microbead technology increases visibility to the human eye up to 300 meters. This is made possible by the retroreflective Urban-RPrint^® fabric, which is coated with thousands of micro-glass spheres and can reflect light from vehicle headlights up to 300 meters away. As a result, cyclists and pedestrians are better protected from accidents with vehicles, even in the dark and in poor visibility.