Analyzing Rider-Injury Severity in Electric Bicycle Jaywalking Accidents

Jaywalking of electric bicycles (e-bikes) is dangerous because it can catch drivers of motor vehicles off guard and lead to collisions between e-bikes and motor vehicles. Hence, this study set out to investigate e-bike rider-injury severity in collisions between jaywalking e-bikes and cars. Based on large-scale simulation experiments using PC-Crash, the effects of collision angle, relative position, and car speed on rider-injury severity were examined. Dynamic response of e-bike riders’ head, chest, and lower extremity at different influencing factor levels were compared using boxplots and a one-way analysis of variance. The least significant difference test was further performed for posthoc pairwise comparisons. The results showed that crossing the road perpendicular to the car direction is the safest crossing angle for e-bike riders. Riders are less injured when hitting cars’ left front corner. As car speed increases, e-bike riders’ head and chest injuries become more severe.