Cyclist – car front collisions; factors that influence occurrence and
injury severity

There are nearly 200 cyclist road deaths a year in the Netherlands. They
are, therefore, the largest group of so-called vulnerable road users. The
Netherlands has with 18%, therefore, also the highest European Union
percentage cyclist road deaths of all road deaths. Where motor vehicles are
the crash opponent of cyclists, 80% of these opponents are cars. The most
common collision type is the crash in which the cyclist is hit in the flank by
the front of a car. This study has concentrated on this collision type.

For this study, the summons form was used to supplement the data from the
standard police registration form. The accident analysis used the data of 209
crashes in which 10 cyclists were killed and 199 were in-patients. The
number of analyzed summons forms was 32.

In many cases, nothing was known about the nature of the cyclists' injuries,
but it became clear that the cyclist's head was often injured. Head injury was
more common among those killed than among the in-patients; the contact
place was often the windscreen and the car roof. In general, cyclist
casualties usually hit the windscreen and the roof in crashes on roads with a
speed limit of 80 km/h and higher.

A literature study confirmed these findings. In addition, it illustrated that
pedestrians more often strike the bonnet with the head than the windscreen
and its frame as is the case for cyclists.

This report also discusses the requirements that, from 2005, will be valid for
new cars. These requirements are based on collisions of motor vehicles and
pedestrians, and not on those between motor vehicles and cyclists. The
vehicle parts that are often hit by cyclists (the windscreen and its frame) are,
however, not covered by the new requirements.

With regard to these new requirements, we recommend additional research
of the contacts with the windscreen and its frame. A proposal to evaluate the
new requirements by means of EU research is supported inasmuch as it is
not limited it to collisions with pedestrians, but also includes collisions with
cyclists.

In order to reduce the severity of collisions with cyclists (and pedestrians),
what is needed is not only intervention in the construction of the vehicle
front, but also measures to reduce the driving and, thus, the collision
speeds. A collision speed of 30 km/h provides cyclists (and pedestrians) with
a good chance of not incurring any severe injury. The layout of the
infrastructure, and (in due time) the installation of locally controlled in-vehicle
speed limiters, can result in a driving speed of 30 km/h.