title: Are electric self-balancing scooters safe in vehicle crash accidents?
abstract: With the pressing demand of environmentally friendly personal transportation vehicles, mobility scooters become more and more popular for the short-distance transportation. Similar to pedestrians and bicyclists, scooter riders are vulnerable road users and are expected to receive severe injuries during traffic accidents. In this research, a MADYMO model of vehicle-scooter crash scenarios is numerically set up. The model of the vehicle with the scenario is validated in pedestrian-vehicle accident investigation with previous literatures in terms of throwing distance and HIC15 value. HIC15 values gained at systematic parametric studies. Injury information from various vehicle crashing speeds (i.e. from 10m/s to 24m/s), angles (i.e. from 0 to 360°), scooter's speeds (i.e. from 0m/s to 4m/s), contact positions (i.e. left, middle and right bumper positions) are extracted, analyzed and then compared with those from widely studied pedestrian-vehicle and bicycle-vehicle accidents. Results show that the ESS provides better impact protection for the riders. Riding ESS would not increase the risk higher than walking at the same impact conditions in terms of head injury. The responsible reasons should be the smaller friction coefficient between the wheel-road than the heel-road interactions, different body gestures leading to different contact positions, forces and timing. Results may shed lights upon the future research of mobility scooter safety analysis and also the safety design guidance for the scooters.
authors.affiliation: Department of Automotive Engineering, School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, PR China; Advanced Vehicle Research Center, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, PR China; Beijing Key Laboratory for High-efficient Power Transmission and System Control of New Energy Resource Vehicle, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, PR China.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Department of Automotive Engineering, School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, PR China; Advanced Vehicle Research Center, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, PR China.
authors.forename: Shi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: Department of Transportation, School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, PR China.
authors.forename: Guizhen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Institute of Transportation Engineering, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang 310058, PR China.
authors.forename: Hongsheng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Qi
authors.affiliation: Department of Transportation, School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, PR China. Electronic address: ypwang@buaa.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Yunpeng
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Automotive Safety and Energy, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, PR China. Electronic address: xushc@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Shucai
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xu
mesh_terms: D000063:Accidents, Traffic / Q000517:prevention & control*; D001642:Bicycling / Q000293:injuries*; D002681:China; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006259:Craniocerebral Trauma / Q000517:prevention & control*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009049:Motorcycles; D004856:Postural Balance; D012306:Risk; D012449:Safety; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D016138:Walking / Q000293:injuries
keywords: Head injuries; Numerical simulation; Self-balancing scooter; Traffic accidents; Vulnerable road users