Bicycles’ role in road accidents: a review of literature

Abstract

Nearly 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. In 2013 in the European Union more than 6 % of all who died in road traffic crashes were cyclists. The number of cyclist killed on roads in the EU has decreased by only 9 %, compared to the total fatality decrease of 18 % from 2010 to 2013. The majority of cyclist fatalities are males (78 %). For the larger countries, Belgium and The Netherlands had the highest proportion of female cyclist fatalities (> 30 %). In general, 55 % of the bicycle fatalities in the EU countries were killed inside urban areas but there are large differences between the countries. In the last couple of years there has been an enormous effort on reduction in cycling fatality numbers across almost all ages in the EU. As a result of this effort, the number of accidents started to slightly decrease. This paper reviews the literature concerning cyclist-motor vehicle collision and road safety management according to the cyclist role in the accident rise. The paper examines pedestrians safety in order to determine what kind of factors of transport infrastructure, vehicle technical parameters, cyclist behavior and road or street category have the influence on cyclist and vehicle accidents and identify technical reasons of the accidents rise. A review is conducted of information in the literature on the injury outcome of a cyclist/vehicle collision for a given impact speed and the likely consequences of reducing the travelling speeds of vehicles in terms of the frequency and severity of cyclist injuries.