The main pillars of PIONEERS are to achieve a deep understanding of the injuries sustained by PTW users, improve the performance of safety systems (Personal Protective Equipment, PPEs, and on-board systems), to develop better test and assessment methods and to increase the use rate of PPE.
The improved performance will be achieved by understanding the most safety-critical accident scenarios and impact conditions to reach a higher level of understanding on how the injuries occur and by developing more reliable, realistic and robust test methods. An increased use will be fulfilled by listening to the rider’s needs, improving the systems in terms of comfort (without compromising safety) and carrying out active awareness raising and dissemination actions.
The main goal of the PIONEERS project is to improve the safety of PTWs (both conventional and electric) by providing an integrated approach to rider protection considering on-rider (PPE) and on-board systems. Therefore, this project will investigate and assess the direct contribution to the reduction of fatalities and the severity of injuries, as well as the number of injured PTW users. The tools for that are developing new PPEs and on-board safety systems, as well as improving the validation and assessment methods and increasing the usage rate of such devices. Developing high-quality products (PPEs and on-board systems) from the European manufacturers and sensitizing the PTW users for the enhanced safety potential of those products will not only increase the safety level for PTW users but will also strengthen European competitiveness.
Finally, the main results of PIONEERS will be:
- Higher understanding of injuries suffered by the riders.
- Better testing methods enabling better performance assessment.
- Better products (PPEs and on-board systems) achieving an increased safety level for PTW users.
The conclusions of the final period are very positive, the simulations were useful to identify the most critical injuries suffered by the riders. Regarding PPEs, it has been proposed new testing methos to airbag jacket, helmet and pelvis among others. Also, an upgrade to the existing PPEs has been done with better materials and new designs to improve the comfort and the safety of the user. And last, but not least, related to the on-board safety, we developed also two different systems to mitigate lateral impact in case of accident with the motorbike.
