Accidents involving two-wheeled vehicles represent the second most frequent cause of highways fatalities, and this rises the major problem of the protection of drivers of this type of vehicle.
The most representative configurations of automobile-two-wheeled vehicle collisions with regard to the frequency of their occurrence and their gravity have been investigated on the basis of accidentological data gathered on site; certain of these configurations were selected for laboratory simulations. About one score of car-moped crashes were simulated with instrumented dummies, amid conditions that duplicated as accurately as possible those of the realworld accidents, and covering the majority of the most frequently occurring configurations.
The findings overall enabled definition of the kinematics of two-wheeledvehicle riders in relation with the accelerometric measurements registered during impact; they also enabled pinpointing of the vehicle areas likely to be struck by the head depending on the configuration, and made it possible to draft protective measures with regard both to the riders and to the obstacles encountered. In particular, the typology of the two-wheeled-vehicle riders' head imoacts against the front parts of cars emerged as being not basicallydifferent from that of the pedestrians' head impacts, and any improvements in this car surface area aiming at pedestrian protection would probably be satisfactory for the protection of two-wheeled-vehicle riders. The solutions should be considered in terms of cost versus effectiveness, but without overlooking the fact that the wearing of a proper helmet constitutes the initial priority, as it is also brought out in the present investigation.