Implications of emerging lightweight urban personal vehicles on traffic safety, based on forecasts of technology solutions for vehicles

Report, 2014

An emerging vehicle type between bicycles and motorcycles are part of ongoing developments to provide alternatives for personal transportation primarily in urban road networks. For the purpose of this report they have been defined as Urban Personal Vehicles – Single Track (UPV-1T). A key characteristic of these vehicles are electrified powertrains, and it is expected that the vehicles will become cheaper and therefore more accessible to a greater proportion of the population but will be more powerful and lighter, therefore increasing the vehicles speed and acceleration. A detailed potential technology development path of these vehicle types, and therefore potential critical situation and collision conditions, are unknown. A study was undertaken to look at what type of UPV-1T’s are currently available on the Swedish market and the current performance specifications of these vehicles. A picture of the current situation surrounding bicycle, moped and motorcycle accidents and causation factors were presented for the Swedish market. A potential technology development path and the application of these technologies with regards to safety critical situations was undertaken. The conclusion to the report was that assuming that the road networks and driver education remain unchanged, that critical situations will increase both in number and severity. In addition to this is that although difficult to predict the specific accident types it was most likely that single vehicle accidents would dominate, but that the possibility exists for likely emerging technologies to be utilized to help counter and reduce potential accidents.