Elsevier

Accident Analysis & Prevention

Volume 73, December 2014, Pages 47-52
Accident Analysis & Prevention

Evaluation of e-bike accidents in Switzerland

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aap.2014.07.020Get rights and content

Highlights

  • This is the first study to evaluate police-recorded e-bike accidents in Switzerland.

  • We analysed accidents of the years 2011 and 2012 involving 504 e-bikers and 871 bicyclists. Accidents in different regional environments (rural vs. urban) were compared.

  • Accident-involved e-bikers were mostly 40–65 years old. Most e-bikers sustained single accidents and helmet usage was higher in the rural than in the urban environment.

  • The evaluation and comparison of the injury severity of e-bikers and bicyclists lead to diverging results and should therefore be addressed in future investigations.

Abstract

Background

The acceptance and usage of electric bicycles has rapidly increased in Switzerland in the last years. Hence this topic has been addressed by policy makers with the aim to facilitate new transport modes and, moreover, to improve their safety.

Methods

Police-recorded accidents of the years 2011 and 2012 involving a total of 504 e-bikers and 871 bicyclists were analysed. National figures were compared with those of a rural and an urban environment.

Results

Most e-bikers who were involved in accidents were 40–65 years old. It was found that most e-bikers sustained single accidents and that helmet usage was higher in the investigated rural environment than in the investigated urban area. The evaluation of the injury severity of e-bikers, particularly compared to bicyclists, lead to diverging results.

Conclusions

The findings presented in this study are intended to serve as a benchmark since basic information on characteristics of e-bike accidents is provided. With respect to differences between the injury severity of e-bikers and bicyclists to-date no clear statement can be drawn. It is suggested to regularly evaluate e-bike accidents to show trends and/or identify changes.

Introduction

In recent years electric bicycle (e-bike) sales rose considerably and thus e-bikes have become an important transport mode in Switzerland (velosuisse, 2014). Since cost efficiency of electric vehicles is increasing the acceptance and usage in public is increasing as well. In Switzerland in 2012 the total number of e-bike sales which were registered since 2005 rose to about 185,000 (2011: about 135,000) (bfu, 2013). Also in context of increasing traffic and urban transport, respectively, this topic has been politically addressed. Hence in 2011 the new category electric bicycle was included in Swiss police reports and hence complements Swiss accident statistics.

Publications on the analysis of e-bike accidents, particularly related to injury severity, are hardly available. The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (bfu, 2013) for example stated in a national survey that in 2012 the number of slightly, severely and fatally injured e-bikers has increased in comparison to 2011 and it was assumed that this phenomenon is related to the strong increase of e-bike sales. Besides, it was found that about one third of all e-bikers, but only about one fourth of all bicyclists who were injured in an accident sustained severe or fatal injuries. Lawinger and Bastian (2013) performed an empirical analysis on e-bike accidents in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The study was based on an in-depth analysis of the police reports seconded by qualitative telephone interviews with the involved e-bikers. By also taking accidents with bicyclists into consideration it was found with respect to injury severity that e-bikers were not involved more often in accidents than bicyclists, but that the proportion of injured and killed e-bikers was slightly higher than that of bicyclists. From this finding it was deduced that consequences from an accident could be worse for e-bikers than for bicyclists. Also Otte et al. (2014) compared e-bike accidents to bicycle accidents in Germany. They found that e-bikers were not injured more often or more severely than bicyclists. In comparison to bicyclists they observed more single accidents, higher velocities and collision speeds, but similar helmet wearing rates in e-bikers. Furthermore, first results of naturalistic driving observations focusing on speeds, mental workload and travel behaviour of e-bikers were recently published (e.g. Twisk et al., 2013, Dozza and Fernandez, 2013). Amongst other results Twisk et al. found and Dozza et al. assumed, based on their observations that e-bikers tend to drive faster than bicyclists. Further publications particularly aiming at e-bikes primarily address topics like usage and benefits, travel behaviour or transport properties. In contrast, numerous publications consider accident statistics, injury mechanisms and helmet usage in bicyclists (e.g. Kim et al., 2007, Elvik, 2011, Karkhaneh et al., 2011).

The aim of this study was to analyse e-bike accidents and to compare the findings with bicycle accidents in the same data set. Various parameters such as age distribution, type of accident, helmet usage and injury severity as well as analyses considering relations between some of those characteristics were investigated. An analysis and comparison of accidents in the whole country, in a rural and in an urban environment was accomplished for the first time in Switzerland.

Section snippets

Source of data

In Switzerland in 2011 a total of 23,562 road users were injured in an accident including 196 e-bikers and 3246 bicyclists. In 2012 a total of 22,557 road users who were injured in an accident including 252 e-bikers and 3061 bicyclists was reported by the police. The individual distributions with respect to injury severity are presented in Table 1.

Accidents involving 504 e-bikers and 871 bicyclists were selected from the database of the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) in order to compare accidents

Age distribution

Regarding the different age categories, it was checked whether school-age road users account for a particularly large amount in the youngest age group. The number of bicycle accidents with school-age children was determined using a cut-off at the age of 14 years. From this age children are allowed to ride an e-bike in Switzerland. It was found that nationwide only 13% of the bicyclists were below 14 years of age; in the urban area the rate was slightly less and in the rural area slightly

Discussion

For the first time an evaluation of e-bike accidents in Switzerland was conducted with the aim to compare the findings with bicycle accidents. Accidents of the years 2011 and 2012 involving 504 e-bikers and 871 bicyclists were analysed. Lawinger and Bastian (2013), for instance, studied 126 and Otte et al. (2014) investigated 30 accidents with e-bikers involved. The total number of reported e-bike cases in this study is higher than in comparable studies and thus provides a good basis to

Conclusions

In this study the first comprehensive evaluation of e-bike accidents in Switzerland was conducted. The findings presented here are intended to serve as a benchmark since basic information on e-bike accidents is provided. Thus it is recommended to regularly investigate e-bike accidents in order to show trends and/or identify changes. Improvements are proposed in terms of the optimisation of police reports. In this regard the authors suggest an implementation of the localisation of injuries or

Acknowledgements

We highly appreciate the support by the Police of the Canton of Zurich and the Police of the City of Zurich as well as by the Federal Roads Office (FEDRO). This study was funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) (Grant no. C12.0027) and conducted under the scope of COST Action TU1101 (“Towards safer bicycling through optimization of bicycle helmets and usage”).

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