The problem of injuries to motorcyclists caused by impacts on roadside barriers has numerously been pointed out in the literature. Nevertheless, there is a lack of agreement concerning injury criteria for these particular cases. One of the objectives of the European research project APROSYS SP4 "Motorcycle Accidents" is to propose a European crash test standard for the assessment of impact performance of roadside barriers with respect to injury risks. This paper describes the methodology of work that has been followed for the proposal of the standard.

In-depth databases have been analysed in order to evaluate the nature of motorcyclists' impacts to barriers and to gain knowledge in addition to the anecdotal cases reported in the literature. About 1000 accidents of powered two-wheelers from four different databases were analysed. In contrast to previous views, impacts in upright riding position seem to occur equally often as impacts in sliding position. A detailed analysis of the current testing procedures (e.g. the Spanish standard, the procedure developed by INRETS, France) has been performed. Full-scale crash tests in sliding position, performed by CIDAUT, and upright position, performed by DEKRA, were included in this analysis. The selection of the injury criteria, especially in head, neck and thorax, has to take into consideration the peculiarities of this kind of accidents. It was concluded that the biofidelity of available dummies (Hybrid III) needs to be further assessed for this particular application, e.g. by comparative simulations using HUMOS2 model.

The knowledge gained at the light of the results obtained from the described methodology will be used in the future development of a standard.