News

A communicating bicycle helmet – can this support the urgent need to tackle deaths of pedestrians and cyclists?

Mar, 03 2020

This is what we aim to understand more about in SAFER’s recently associated project; Communicating bicycle helmet. In this new collaborative project our researchers are looking into the possibility of helmets to reduce injuries and, notably, the possibility of a helmet to communicate with other road users. The project is focused on two cases, urban and rural case perspective and aims to develop a “proof of concept”.

Urgent actions are needed
According to statistic, at least 51,300 pedestrians and 19,450 cyclists were killed on EU roads between 2010 and 2018. Cyclist deaths in the EU are declining eight times more slowly than deaths of motor vehicle occupants. Several principally ways ahead can be taken to reduce the number of accidents. One way ahead is to prevent the accident to occur at all and another way is to reduce the severity of the accidents as much as possible. The idea of a communicating helmet has actually the potential to support both approaches, prevention and severity.

The idea in brief
A communicating helmet can send information to other road-users and also receive information by sensors of different kinds. Comfort is one important issue for no-use, but it is possible that new functions might stimulate an increase in helmet use. If the helmet contains functionalities that change road-user behaviour it will in this project be possible to study how it will change both cycling as well as the interaction between road-users. The aim of the project is to better understand what can be developed for the rural case and what can be developed with a urban case perspective, but also gain knowledge about the degree of technical complexity; from stand alone helmet solutions to a helmet that involves cloud solutions and new gears on the bicycle.

SAFER partners involved
This is a Skyltfonden project, funded by Trafikverket and involving Trafikverket, VTI, Ericson, and POC (industry helmet partner). The results of the project will be presented during 2020. The project leader is Jan Andersson at VTI and the project is placed in SAFER's Research area Road user behaviour.