During this past week, I have been looking at a lot of cycle accident statistics, which seem to have pointed out to me what the main problems that are afflicting the cycle industry. I have come to realise that city cyclists have a tendency to have more accidents, mainly due to the larger number of cyclist in the small space of a city.
Overall, I have found that men between the age of 36 and 45 are the most likely demographic to have a fatal or serious accident. It seems that approx 75% of fatal and serious accidents occur in an urban area, where 75% occur at or near a road junction, 80% during daylight hours and approx 75% of cyclist killed have a majors head injury.
http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/adviceandinformation/cycling/facts-figures.aspx#references
I have also looked into the most common injuries that occur, finding that Limb injuries such as arm and leg injuries are quite common 40% of all injuries are arm injuries, 25% are leg injuries, chest injuries are less common – 5%, but tend to be far more serious and head injuries are also quite common – 40%, however 70% of fatalities in London occurred due to head injury and 80% in rural areas.
Overall, I feel far more confident with my topic as well as excited for the prospects it allows.
I feel that it is clear that road junctions seem to be by far the most dangerous areas for cyclists and so I have decided to focus on cycle safety at road junctions.
I have also written a basic outline brief:
To design a solution to keep cyclists safe whilst riding in a city. The solution must work to solve the most dangerous problems currently facing cyclists, specifically safety on the road at junctions.
The solution must sufficiently protect the cyclist via either prevention of the accident or protection from injury and must help to lower the serious injury and fatality risks associated with cycling in a city.
The final solution must protect the user at least once, it should aim to be multi-use and sustainable through production, use and eventually at the end of its life cycle.