Today, cyclists constitute the highest percentage of severely injured road users in Sweden. Collisions between bicycles and motor vehicles often have the most serious outcome. In order to mitigate the severity of the outcome or even to avoid these collisions, it is of great importance to investigate the circumstances and contributing factors why these collisions occur. As it is well known that bicycle accidents are underreported in official data bases and information regarding accident details is very limited, the aim of the study presented here is to gain more detailed information about bicycle-passenger car collisions based on motor insurance claims collected from If P&C Insurance. Motor insurance claims which are based on the third party liability insurance include bicycle and passenger car collisions at all levels of crash severity and describe the situations in detail, often both from the driver’s and cyclist’s perspective. For analysis, a data set of a total of 882 collisions between bicycles and passenger cars in Sweden (2005-2012) was used. Results showed that over 78% of all bicycle-passenger car collisions were situations in which the bicycle and car crossed each other’s paths. Collisions in which the bicycle and car went in the same or opposite direction were less frequent (11%) but here the injury severity was on average higher. With regard to the crossing situations, it was found that in over 53% of the collisions the cyclist crossed the roadway while coming out from a bicycle path. In about half of these collisions the driver reported that he/she did not see the cyclist before the collision. Analysis based on this novel data will contribute to a better understanding of bicycle-passenger car collisions in real road traffic situations which cannot be found in other data sources. It also facilitate the development of assistance systems and traffic planning to support bicycle safety for both car manufacturers and road planners (Author/publisher)
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