Vulnerable road users play an increasingly important role in traffic safety work as the severity of their injuries often are higher than for those travelling in a car or truck. Thus safety devices implemented in cars should not only protect the car occupants but also vulnerable collision opponents in a crash. When looking at accidents where bicyclists have collided with a car one certain accident scenario seems to be more frequent than expected: A bicyclist riding along a road with longitudinally parked cars, suddenly the door of a parked car opens and the bicyclist either collides with the open door or falls when attempting to avoid the collision. The objective of this study is to display the injuries of cyclists in such accident situations and to analyze trajectories and time related accident frame parameters for the suggestion of an appropriate driver assistance system on passenger cars to reduce the number of such accident situation. Further the estimation of the effectiveness of such an assistance system is done within the chosen sample of real world accidents. The study is based on the analysis of real word crashes using the data of the German in depth Accident Study (GIDAS) by means of weighting, an extrapolation of the accident situation in Germany is provided.
Keywords:
bicycle accidents, door impact, injury mechanisms, vulnerable road users