Influence of bicycle crossing location at urban multi-lane roundabouts on potential injuries sustained to two-wheeler riders

Abstract

Conventional bicycles, e-bikes and e-scooters have become extensively used with the associated growing traffic safety concerns. Understanding the main differences in injury risks perceived by these two-wheeler (2Ws) riders in collisions with motor vehicles at intersections is essential. This paper intended to create an analysis methodology based on PC-Crash accident reconstruction to examine the potential kinematics and head injury risks of 2Ws riders involved with vehicle collisions at one urban multi-lane roundabout. The case study focused on a bicycle crossing located 5 m far from roundabout exit ring. The innovative nature of this study relied on the integrated assessment of bicycle crossing distance, impact location and vehicle geometry on 2Ws potential injuries. Via multi-body modeling of the three two-wheeler types, two vehicle categories, five bicycle crossing locations and four collision angles in PC-Crash accident reconstruction software, 54 collision scenarios were tested. The dynamic response of 2W rider was analyzed using linear and angular accelerations, and head injury metrics. The findings indicated that actual bicycle crossing location resulted in probability of mild-to-moderate concussion lower than 35% in all riders. Simulations showed higher head injury risks of the e-scooters, followed by conventional- and e-bikes riders. The head injury risk increased as crossing location increased, but the collision angle did not exhibit a clear trend on the kinematical response variables. The proposed methodology can be applied to investigate the impact of bicycle crossings on injury parameters associated to 2Ws riders in any type of roundabout.