It is often said that the bicycle is the "weak in traffic," but is that true?   Let's start by looking at Figure 7. The horizontal axis shows the ratio of accidents in which bicycles are the primary parties, classified according to the other party involved in the accident. The term "primary parties" basically refers to the parties that are more at fault for causing the accident. In other words, when the other party is a moped or larger vehicle, bicycles are deemed to be less at fault in most cases. But this is reversed when the other party is another bicycle or a pedestrian. In most of those cases, bicycles are deemed to be more at fault.

Figure 8 shows the extent of injuries incurred by bicyclists in accidents, classified according to the other party involved in the accident. There are cases in which the bicyclist is unhurt; in those cases the other party suffers a slight or more serious injury. Keeping this in mind, let's look at Figure 8. When the other party is a moped or larger vehicle, it is safe to say that bicyclists incur the brunt of the injuries. But when the other party is a pedestrian, it is evident that pedestrians often receive most of the injuries. This means that bicycles are more often at fault than pedestrians in bicycle-to-pedestrian accidents.

Trends in the number of bicycle-to-pedestrian accidents are shown in Figure 9, which indicates that this number has risen sharply recently. The number was particularly high in 2000, when it was more than twice that of the previous year. It is difficult to imagine how the environment surrounding bicycles and pedestrians changed so rapidly, but there is no doubt that concern for bicycle-to-pedestrian accidents has mounted.

The bar graph in Figure 10 shows the ratio of bicyclists and pedestrians involved in bicycle-to-pedestrian accidents, classified according to the age of the parties involved in the accidents. In other words, this means that when children in the 6-12 age group are involved in bicycle-to-pedestrian accidents, they are the bicyclist in about 40% of the cases and the pedestrian in about 60% of the cases. As is evident from Figure 10, the party that suffers injuries in accidents involving bicycles and pedestrians is most often the pedestrian, and that pedestrians in the 6 and under age group and the relatively old 56 and over age group suffer the most injuries. The broken line in this chart indicates the ratio of cases in which bicyclists are the primary parties in bicycle-to-pedestrian accidents. In other words, bicycles are at fault in practically all bicycle-to-pedestrian accidents. Thus, bicycles can also be the perpetrators of accidents, and this has recently become a big problem.

In the Road Traffic Act of Japan, bicycles are treated as vehicles, just like motorcycles and motor vehicles. There are probably many people in Japan who think that bicycles are not vehicles, because a license is not required to ride a bicycle. It makes sense that of the bicyclists involved in accidents, the number of those who committed a violation of the law is not small. Figure 11 summarizes the main types of violations committed by bicyclists involved in accidents. For reference, the types of violations of motor vehicle drivers involved in accidents are also shown. From this chart it is evident that the type of violation more often committed with bicycles than with motor vehicles is "failure to confirm safety factors." This means that people riding bicycles are often oblivious of their surroundings. The next most frequent types of violation are "failure to stop temporarily," "failure to observe surrounding traffic movement," and "disregarding traffic signal." As one might expect, it is harder to ignore a traffic signal than a stop sign. Looking at age groups, we see that younger bicyclists are often in violation of "failure to confirm safety factors" due to their tendency toward impulsive behavior. "Failure to stop temporarily" is also prevalent among age groups who do not have driver's licenses, and it is likely that in some cases the reason this violation was committed was that the perpetrators did not know this rule. Also, it should come as no surprise that the "no violation committed" category contains fewer bicyclists in the younger age groups than bicyclists in the older age groups or motor vehicle drivers.   In the case of motor vehicles, on the other hand, the most frequent type of violation is "failure to look ahead carefully," which accounts for the large number of rear-end collisions.

The Road Traffic Act stipulates that vehicles traveling on a roadway must keep to the left. Being vehicles, naturally, bicycles are no exception when traveling on roadways. Traveling on the right-hand side of the road is dangerous for bicycles, as will be seen in the following, although the number of instances is not so large. In Figure 12, we selected head-on collisions and collisions while passing each other that occurred on roadways other than intersections, and indicated the ratio of "traveling on the right-hand side" violations, classified according to the linear shape of the road as viewed by bicyclists. Regardless of the road shape, the proportion of accidents caused by "traveling on the right-hand side" is about 18%. On right-hand curves, however, this ratio jumps to about 31%, which is 1.7 times greater. From the standpoint of the bicyclist, therefore, "traveling on the right-hand side" is extremely dangerous when traveling on a right-hand curve.

Figure 13 shows a bicycle traveling on a blind right-hand curve encountering an oncoming car. For reference, we drew in a bicycle that is obeying the rules and traveling on the left-hand side of the road. Since the car is traveling on the left-hand side, as is only natural, the car and bicycles are positioned as shown in the figure. In such a situation, a motor vehicle may not be able to see a bicycle traveling on the right-hand side of the road, even though it can see a bicycle traveling on the left-hand side.

Figure 14 shows which parts of the body bicyclists (including passengers) mainly injure in traffic accidents. Lower limb injuries have a high rate of occurrence, as they are suffered by more than 40% of people in the 6-55 age group. These are followed by head and upper limb injuries. In the other age groups, the rate of head injuries is higher, especially among children aged 5 and under. In this group, head injuries are the highest, accounting for about 50% of all injuries. If we consider only deaths, which are not included in the figure, head injuries have a very high rate of occurrence, about 70%. From this it can be concluded that protecting the lower limbs, head, and upper limbs of people on bicycles will be effective in reducing injuries incurred in bicycle accidents. Safety measures such as wearing crash helmets should therefore be put into effect immediately.

UP

Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis (ITARDA)