Powered two‐wheeler riders is a group for who fatalities are not decreasing at the same rate as for other road users. It is also a group that is likely to increase in the future due to traffic congestion. To develop countermeasures to protect powered two‐wheeler drivers it is necessary to understand accident events in detail, the injuries and their sources.
The German database GIDAS was queried for powered two‐wheeler crashes where the driver was severely injured (AIS3+), resulting in 332 cases, where the injuries, pre‐crash scenarios and injury sources were studied in detail.
The most common pre‐crash scenarios were found to be powered two‐wheelers losing control, or that another vehicle did not notice the powered two‐wheeler. The most common injury source for the powered two‐wheeler driver was the surrounding, with cars second. The road surface was the dominating surrounding injury source. An interesting finding was that leg injuries were over‐represented in car impacts, and thorax injuries similarly for the surrounding as injury source.
Countermeasures with highest potential to mitigate or prevent severe (AIS3+) injury, include leg and chest protection for the rider, vehicle‐mounted warning or automatic emergency braking systems and vehicle‐to‐ powered two‐wheeler (V2X) communication.