Accident Scenario Analysis of Passenger Car to Powered Two-Wheeler Accident Based on China In-Depth Accident Study

Different from North American and European countries, the national statistical data of China shows that the users of powered two-wheeler (PTW) has accounted 37% of total traffic death and 46.6% injuries in 2017, indicating the PTW user is the most harmed group among various road users in China. Comparison with the occupant and pedestrian protection technology, research on PTW protection methodology was ignored in developing countries. The casualty caused by PTW will leading the board in next few years. The objective of this research was to illustrate the typical pre-crash scenario of passenger car to PTW accidents in China and for the better understanding on the impact configuration and environment overview. 2,319 target cases were selected out of 5,219 cases from 2011 to 2019 in China in-depth accident study database. Descriptive statistic about the environmental influences, vehicle information, individual characteristics, and injury severity was used to interpret the crash events in detail. Based on European cyclist accident testing scenarios (CATS), the extended version was adapted to classify the 2,319 cases into 19 kind of scenarios. Result shows the crossing scenario (PTW from left and right side of passenger car) is the most frequent and harmful scenario which accounted 35.8% for the seriously injured and death accident and 29.1% regardless the injury severity. 25.8% of the accidents are longitudinal scenario (including L1-L6, On1, On2). The proportion of passenger car turning left (including T3-T5, T9) is a bit higher than turning right (including T1-T2, T10, T14) with percentage of 24.4% and 18.1% respectively. Comparing with the similar research result in European Union, the crossing scenario is the most frequent type in both two regions. The EU scenario densely distributed on crossing and longitudinal (64%–78% for the seriously injured and killed) while the scenario in China is more like average distributed. After categorizing the accident scenario, PC-CRASH was used to reconstruct the accidents. The reconstruction result shows that 81.3% of PTW initial speed is under 30 km/h and 88.6% of passenger car initial speed is under 60 km/h. This research could be the guidance for vehicle autonomous emergency braking test scenario as well as PTW user’s protection protocol assessment.