A cost study has been carried out, based on Dutch insurance data of payments to victims (pedestrians and cyclists) of collisions against car front ends. The results of this study will be used for a cost-benefit analysis of a proposed amendment (a series of car front end crash tests) to the existing EC-Directive 74/483 on protruding external parts of new cars. These tests are developed by EEVC-WG10. The international aim is to improve the outcome of collisions of car front ends against pedestrians. It is expected that these improvements will benefit bicyclists as well. Therefore injury costs of cyclists are also taken into consideration in this study.

Results of the cost study indicate that insurance paynent-data may be applied for this purpose. Results indicate that the level of costs thus found is lower than the level of costs of injury found in other (international) cost studies.

This may be partially due to the casualty-data used, in which emphasis appears on children and elderly, who have not incomes of their own. Therefore, the cost category ‘loss of income’ is not applicable.

The results also indicate that the two casualty-groups (cyclists and pedestrians) may be combined as far as the level of costs (payments) is concerned.