Recent accident statistics from the German national database state bicyclists being the second endangered group of vulnerable road users besides pedestrians. With 399 fatalities, more than 14.000 seriously injured and more than 61.000 slightly injured persons on german roads in the year 2011, the group of bicyclists is ranked second of all road user groups (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2012). While the overall bicycle helmet usage frequency in Germany is very low, evidence is given that its usage leads to a significant reduction of severe head injuries.

After an estimation of the benefit of bicycle helmet usage as well as an appropriate test procedure for bicyclists, this paper describes two different approaches for the improvement of bicyclist safety. While the first one is focusing on the assessment of the vehicle based protection potential for bicyclists, the second one is concentrating on the safety assessment of bicycle helmets.

Within the first part of the study the possible revision of the existing pedestrian testing protocols is being examined, using in depth accident data, full scale simulation and hardware testing.

Within the second part of the study, the results of tests according to supplemental test procedures for the safety assessment of bicycle helmets developed by the German Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt) are presented.

An additional full scale test performed at reduced impact speed proves that measures of active vehicle safety as e.g. braking before the collision event do not necessarily always lead to a reduction of injury severity.