Publi­ca­ti­ons

In 2023, 446 cyclists were killed in road traffic accidents in Germany, approxi-mately 42 percent of them (189 cyclists) outside of built-up areas.

The number of bicycles as a proportion of total road traffic has risen considerably in recent years, in particular in connection with the Covid pandemic and above all in urban areas [RAD20]. At the same time, bicycles are increasingly being used not only as a means of transport for the cyclists themselves, but also as a way of transporting children. In addition to conventional child seats, the use of bicycle trailers and cargo bicycles is also growing.

There were a total of 17,755 accidents involving personal injury on Germany’s motorways in 2022, that is approximately 11 percent fewer than in 2019. This change is due, in particular, to the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The purpose of the present study is to use accident data relating to wrong-way driving incidents on motorways in order to identify patterns, assess possible countermeasures and compare their effectiveness.

Functions of vehicle operation, such as windscreen wiper settings, are increasingly being implemented digitally and operated via touch displays. They integrate many functions. However their operation distracts from the driving task. In a study, the UDV therefore investigated how in-vehicle HMI should be designed to be as least distractive as possible.

More than 10 years ago, the German Insurers Accident Research assessed the accident risk posed by farm tractors in roadtraffic and identified typical patterns. Initial assessments of the figures currently reported in the German traffic accident statistics and the insurers’ accident database (UDB) have shown that the occurrence of accidents involving farm tractors has changed during the intervening period.

The so-called “feedback intervention for senior drivers in real traffic situa-tions” was developed as part of a UDV pilot project undertaken in 2019 in order to maintain the driving competencies of senior car drivers in the long term or even to improve these.

For some time, society has increasingly been using the term “gender gap” to discuss whether women are under-represented compared to men as beneficiaries of research and development and whether insufficient con[1]sideration is paid to their gender-related specificities. The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of gender on the risk of serious injury to car occupants on the basis of German accident data.

Fixed speed cameras are very effective in reducing accidents. That is one of the findings of a new study by the German Insurers A cident Research.