Electric scooters accidents: Analyses of two Swedish accident data sets.

Since august 2018 electric scooters (e-scooters) are available in selected cities in Sweden, operated by several different operators. There is a growing concern regarding their safety as they grow in popularity. The aim with this study was to investigate injuries associated with e-scooters in Sweden and to identify accident characteristics. In addition, the aim was to observe how different data collection procedures and samples may influence the results. Two complementary data sets were used; insurance data including all reported injuries to Folksam Insurance Group during the period January 2019 to May 2020 and the Swedish Traffic Accident Data Acquisition database (STRADA), the national system for road traffic injury data collection, was used to study accident related to e-scooter use in the Stockholm city area between May and the end of August 2019. Most of the injuries associated with e-scooters occurred in single crashes, but in 13% of the accidents another road user was injured, either due to interactions with e-scooters or due to a parked e-scooter being a hazard. In both data sets more than half of the accidents occurred during weekends. In total 46% of all who had visited an emergency department the accident occurred during night-time (10 pm to 6 am). The overall large proportion of injuries to the head and face indicates the need for actions aimed to increase helmet use among e-scooter riders. Local authorities should take a wider responsibility since one third of all accidents primarily occurred due to lack of maintenance or that the rider hit a curb stone. In comparison to hospital data, insurance claims include riders with all types of injuries irrespectively what type of healthcare the rider was seeking. Hence, to better understand the consequences and to make the right decisions regarding countermeasures aimed to improve the safety of e-scooter riding, data from different data source are needed.

The properties of Safety Performance Indicators in target setting, projections and safety design of the road transport system.

Road traffic Safety Performance Indicators (SPIs) are becoming increasingly used as an instrument for the planning and monitoring of safety progress. SPIs form an intermediate step between actions and final outcome in terms of casualties in road crashes. It is understood that SPIs are closely related to outcome; and that it is also possible to use them in calculations and predictions of both actions and final outcome. In the present study, it was found that some of the properties assigned to SPIs could be questioned. An assumption of linearity between SPIs and final outcome was partly rejected. It was also found that 100% fulfillment of a set of SPIs could lead to very low mortality, demonstrating the importance of handling SPIs simultaneously.

Evaluation of safety ratings of roads based on frontal crashes with known crash pulse and injury outcome.

OBJECTIVE: The objective in this study, using data from crashed cars fitted with on-board crash pulse recorders, was to present differences in average crash severity, distribution of crash severity, and injury outcomes, based on an independent safety rating of roads, also taking road type and speed limit into consideration. Furthermore, the objective was to evaluate differences in injury risk, based on the distribution of crash severity. METHODS: The investigation included both frontal two-vehicle crashes and single-vehicle crashes with known injury outcome. In total, 209 real-world crashes involving cars fitted with crash pulse recorders were included. For all crashes, average mean acceleration and change of velocity of the vehicle acceleration pulse were measured and calculated. All crash spots were classified according to an independent road safety rating program (European Road Assessment Programme Road Protection Score), where the safety quality of roads is rated in relation to posted speed limits. The crash severity and injury outcome in crashes that occurred on roads with good safety ratings were compared with crashes on roads with poor safety ratings. The data were also divided into subcategories according to posted speed limit and road type, to evaluate whether there was a difference in crash severity and injury outcome within the categories. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: In total, crash severity was statistically significantly lower in crashes occurring on roads with good safety ratings than in crashes occurring on roads with poor safety ratings. It was found that crash severity and injury risk were lower on roads with good safety ratings with a speed limit of above 90 km/h compared with roads with poor safety ratings, irrespective of speed limit. On the other hand, crash severity was higher on roads with good safety ratings with speed limit of 70 km/h than on roads with poor safety ratings with the same speed limit. Though it was found that a higher speed limit resulted in higher crash severity on roads with poor safety ratings, the opposite was found on roads with good safety ratings. The main reason for this was that lanes for traffic traveling in opposite directions were more often separated at higher speeds on roads with good safety ratings. On divided roads with good safety ratings, there were no crashes resulting in crash severity above the level corresponding to a 10 percent risk of sustaining serious or fatal injury. This indicates that one of the most important safety measures is divided roads.