The problem of injuries to motorcyclists caused by impacts with roadside barriers is a well known issue, but until recently, few standards have been proposed in this field. European Standard EN-1317 assesses the performance of road restraint systems by performing crash tests using vehicles withmasses ranging from 900 to 38000 kg. However, motorcyclists, being vulnerable road users and with a key importance in road casualty statistics, arenot specifically addressed. In Spain, a research work was carried out with the main objective to develop a proposal of test procedure to evaluate road infrastructure in terms of motorcyclists’ safety. Firstly, it was necessary to identify the most representative scenarios describing real motorcyclists’ impacts against infrastructure. Database analysis and literaturereview did not yield conclusive results, so a theoretical study, reconstruction of accidents and computer simulation work was performed in order toselect the parameters to be used in the standard proposal. On the other hand, no crash-test dummies were available (specifically developed and validated) for this application. The review of similar test standards and a numerical dummy model aiming to modify an existing (Hybrid III) dummy were deemed to be the most applicable steps to improve the described situation in the medium term. Accordingly, injury criteria were defined for head, neck and thorax. This paper describes the work methodology that was followed for the establishment of guidelines which led to the current Spanish Standard for the assessment of roadside furniture performance.
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