Poor quality cycle lanes cause most accidents in Sweden

Poor quality of cycle lanes are the most likely cause of bicycle accidents in Sweden, a report by insurance company Folksam claims. Some 70 per cent of all bicycle accidents which cause serious injuries involved only the cyclist and were caused by poor maintenance of the lanes, gravel or snow. Around 20 per cent of the accidents involved a car or other four-wheeled vehicles, while 10 per cent involved a moped, another bicycle or a pedestrian.
May 4, 2012 Read time: 1 min
Poor quality of cycle lanes are the most likely cause of bicycle accidents in Sweden, a report by insurance company 5440 Folksam claims. Some 70 per cent of all bicycle accidents which cause serious injuries involved only the cyclist and were caused by poor maintenance of the lanes, gravel or snow. Around 20 per cent of the accidents involved a car or other four-wheeled vehicles, while 10 per cent involved a moped, another bicycle or a pedestrian.

Maria Krafft, manager for Folksam's traffic research, said that municipalities would have to establish a strategy to improve the traffic safety for cyclists in the same way as for cars.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Machine vision - cameras for intelligent traffic management
    January 25, 2012
    For some, machine vision is the coming technology. For others, it’s already here. Although it remains a relative newcomer to the ITS sector, its effects look set to be profound and far-reaching. Encapsulating in just a few short words the distinguishing features of complex technologies and their operating concepts can sometimes be difficult. Often, it is the most subtle of nuances which are both the most important and yet also the most easily lost. Happily, in the case of machine vision this isn’t the case:
    Read More
  • ITF releases projections for modal shares, emissions
    December 4, 2014
    New projections, released today by the International Transport Forum (ITF) at the OECD during the COP20 climate change negotiations in Lima, Peru, highlight a critical choice for policy makers: whether to pursue urbanisation based on public transport or on private transport with cars and two-wheelers. Big cities in China, India and Latin America with over 500,000 inhabitants will more than double their share of world passenger transport emissions by 2050 to 20 per cent (2010: 9 per cent), if current urba
    Read More
  • New research: to illuminate or not to illuminate
    February 5, 2013
    Researchers from the US Lighting Research Center (LRC) and Penn State University have recently published a paper entitled “To illuminate or not to illuminate: Roadway lighting as it affects traffic safety at intersections”. Published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention the paper describes a parallel approach to lighting safety analysis. Tackling the tricky questions of when and where to install roadway illumination, while at the same reducing municipal costs, is a challenge for transportation a
    Read More
  • Smart Cities put people, prudence and businesses before technology
    December 4, 2014
    Caroline Haynes tells ITS International that transport planners and equipment suppliers need to adopt different thinking and the smartest cities don’t call themselves smart. The term Smart Cities has been around for some time and has become something of a catch-all term applied to novel or futuristic technology deployed in an urban setting.
    Read More

Highlighted Content