Welcome to the first RideRunner development blog. This is where we’ll share what we’re building, why we’re building it, and the thinking behind every feature — the good calls, the bad calls, and everything we learn along the way.
We’re not a big team with a marketing department. We’re a small group of riders who wanted a better app. And we think the best way to build something for the motorcycle community is to actually talk to the motorcycle community — not hide behind a roadmap PDF and drop features twice a year.
Where It Started
RideRunner started on the back of a bike. I’d go on group rides with mates — weekends through the hills, mid-week evening loops, the occasional multi-day trip — and I kept running into the same problems:
- No easy way to track where we’d been. Strava is for cyclists and runners. Google Maps doesn’t log your ride for you.
- No way to know if a mate had crashed. If someone went off on a corner ahead of you, you had no idea until you found them stopped on the side of the road — or worse, they didn’t make it home and nobody knew.
- No proper community features for motorcyclists. Facebook groups work, but there’s no shared ride history, no team rankings, no way to see who’s nearby and looking for a ride.
- Crash detection apps were either expensive subscription boxes or janky phone apps that never worked properly.
So we started building.
What We Built (And Why)
Let’s walk through the core features and the reasoning behind each one. We want you to understand not just what the app does, but why it does it that way — and where we think it still falls short.
Automatic Ride Tracking
This was the first thing we built. The app detects when you start moving on a motorcycle (not in a car — the accelerometer and speed profiles are different enough to distinguish) and begins logging your route automatically. No “Start Ride” button you forget to press. No losing a ride because you were already three corners in before you remembered to hit record.
The thinking: Riders shouldn’t have to think about the app. The app should think about the rider. Every feature we’ve added since has been measured against that principle. If it requires the rider to stop what they’re doing and tap a screen, it better be worth the interruption.
Crash Detection & SOS
This is the feature people ask about most. Using the phone’s built-in accelerometer and gyroscope, RideRunner detects sudden impacts that match the profile of a motorcycle crash. If detected, it triggers a 15-second countdown. Cancel it and you’re fine. Don’t cancel it, and your emergency contacts get your GPS coordinates automatically.
The thinking: We debated whether to even include this. It’s a serious responsibility — false alarms annoy people, missed detections can be dangerous. Ultimately, we decided that an imperfect system that saves one life is better than no system at all. We’ve tuned the sensitivity based on real riding data (yes, we crashed test phones onto concrete — for science). But we’re honest about its limitations: it relies on phone sensors, battery life, and mobile coverage. It’s a safety aid, not a substitute for calling emergency services.
We’re actively working on improving detection accuracy and would love feedback from the community on how it performs in the real world.
Group Rides & Teams
This is where RideRunner gets interesting. You can schedule group rides, invite your mates, and see everyone’s location in real-time on a shared map. No more “where are you” texts. No more waiting at the meet point wondering who’s running late.
Teams let you form crews with custom banners and compete on leaderboards — daily, weekly, monthly, and all-time distance and speed rankings. It’s friendly competition that gets people riding more.
The thinking: Riding is better with people. The social features aren’t an afterthought — they’re the whole point. We wanted to build something that makes it easier to organise rides, find riding buddies, and build a community around the thing we all love. The gamification (leaderboards, badges, KmPoints) exists to encourage that, not to create addiction loops.
Aggro Mode — The Controversial One
This feature divides opinion, and we’re okay with that. Aggro Mode is a real-time dashboard that shows your lean angle, braking force, acceleration, and cornering G-forces during a ride. It’s designed for riders who want to analyse their riding — whether you’re working on smoother cornering, harder braking, or just want to see the numbers.
The thinking: We originally designed Aggro Mode with the same thresholds you’d see on track-day telemetry — expecting race-level forces. Early testers pointed out that real-world riding on public roads produces much gentler forces, and the feature was effectively useless. We listened, recalibrated the thresholds (from m/s² to g-force units), and now the data actually means something.
We also changed some labels after feedback. “Hard Brakes” became “Brakes”. “Hard Accel” became “Accel”. The point isn’t to make riders feel slow — it’s to give them useful information. If you’re pulling 0.25g on the brakes into a corner, that’s real data you can work with.
We know some people won’t want Aggro Mode at all. That’s fine — it’s optional, toggle it off. But for riders who want to geek out on the numbers, we wanted to get it right.
Claimed Roads & Hazard Markers
See a patch of gravel mid-corner? Tap the map and mark it. Road surface deteriorated? Drop a pin. Other riders in your area see it when they approach that location. Claimed Roads lets riders mark a road segment they’ve personally verified as good riding — a seal of approval from someone who’s actually been there.
The thinking: This is the “helping each other out” feature. We’ve all been caught out by unexpected roadworks, diesel spills, or potholes that weren’t there last week. Crowd-sourced hazard reporting works — Waze proved that — but nobody’s built it specifically for motorcycles, where hazards like gravel, oil, and uneven tarmac matter more than they do in a car.
The Reclaim cost (it costs KmPoints to reclaim a road someone else claimed first) is intentional. It prevents spam and means the person who actually rides a road regularly gets to vouch for it. If you disagree with someone’s assessment, you can reclaim — and the escalating cost (10 + reclaimCount × 10) means you’d better have a strong opinion about that road surface.
KmPoints & Badges
Every kilometre you ride earns KmPoints. You can redeem them towards premium subscriptions. Badges track milestones — first ride, 100km, dawn patrol (ride before sunrise), night rider, distance milestones, and more. Badges appear on your rider profile for others to see.
The thinking: Earning something for riding feels better than just staring at a number. The badges are deliberately achievable — we’ll add harder ones as the community grows. And we made sure KmPoints can be spent on something real (premium), not just a vanity scoreboard.
Where We’re Going
This is the first post, so here’s what to expect from this blog going forward:
- Feature deep-dives — The thinking, the data, and the trade-offs behind new features as they’re built.
- Honest post-mortems — When something breaks or a feature flops, we’ll talk about why.
- Google Play & App Store rejections — Yes, we’ll share those too. (Spoiler: we just had to tear out an unused audio plugin because Google said our foreground service wasn’t justified. Fair call. We fixed it.)
- Community feedback — If enough of you ask for a feature or flag a problem, we’ll prioritise it — and we’ll tell you when and why.
- Development previews — What’s coming next, what’s in testing, and what got cut and why.
We’re not trying to be a polished corporate blog. We’re trying to build in public because we think that’s the best way to build something riders actually want.
We Want to Hear From You
This app exists because of group rides with friends. The features exist because riders told us what they needed. That doesn’t stop now. Drop us a line at support@riderunner.app, message us on social media, or talk to us on a ride — we’re out there too.
What do you want to see next? What are we doing wrong? What do you wish your riding app had? We’re listening.
— Baz & the RideRunner team
RideRunner is free on iOS and Android. No subscription required for core tracking features.