When it comes to protecting vulnerable road users, there is much work to be done. The European Commission has set a reduction target of 50% by 2030 for accidents involving the death or serious injury of vulnerable road users. Although there has been a slight reduction in accidents since 2013, targets for 2020 were not met. It is vulnerable road users in particular that are at risk: approximately half of the people killed on European roads in 2018 were pedestrians, cyclists or motorcyclists. 83% of cyclist deaths involved a collision with a motorised vehicle. At the same time, ever more people are taking up cycling.
To date, most safety efforts have been focused on recognising the presence of pedestrians. However, cyclists are the central focus of the Bike2CAV project (the acronym stands for “Bicycle to Connected Automated Vehicle”): companies and research organisations are collaborating to investigate and test opportunities for the cooperative detection of collision risks, as well as non-distracting warning concepts. Until now, methods for the cooperative detection of bicycle collision risks have only been simulated. We aim to address this gap by using real-world data from a proof-of-concept prototype to validate these methods.
Bike2CAV tackles the following research topics:
- Improving environmental perception and detecting the intentions of cyclists.
- Cooperative detection of cyclists through CAVs.
- Non-distracting collision warning concepts for cyclists.
- The evaluation of an integrated proof-of-concept prototype.