A complete summary of all cases collected by each research team is presented in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1: Total number of cases collected  

      There were 103 accident cases (11.2%) within the MAIDS database that involved a fatality of either the rider or the passenger (Table 3.2). A fatality was defined as any death within 30 days of the accident. The number of fatal cases collected by the German research team was the result of their focus upon more seriously injured riders.

Table 3.2: Number of fatal cases

Note: There were multiple fatalities in two cases.

Table 3.3 gives the distribution of the PTW legal categories for both the accident data and the exposure or case control data. The data shows that the majority of vehicles were L3 vehicles; however, when compared to the exposure data, they were neither over- nor under-represented in the accident data. Therefore, there is no increased risk in the operation of an L3 vehicle when compared to other PTW legal categories. Similar findings can be reported for the mofa legal categories. A chi-square test of the relationship between the L1 accident data and the L1 exposure data shows that the L1 vehicles are over-represented in the MAIDS database (p < .05).

Table 3.3: PTW legal category

Table 3.4 presents the PTW collision partners for all cases collected during this research project. Passenger cars were the most frequent collision partner (60.0%), followed by the roadway (9.0%). The high percentage of passenger car, truck, sport utility vehicle (SUV) and bus collision partners is not unusual since most of the accidents took place in an urban environment where PTWs must share the roadway with other motorized vehicles. This distribution only represents the object with which the PTW ultimately collided, and does not suggest accident causation, since there were many cases in which the PTW rider successfully avoided colliding with a car, PTW, truck, etc., but instead impacted the roadway or some other fixed object. The PTW collision partner is not necessarily the OV. Single vehicle accidents (e.g., running off the roadway) are also included in this distribution.

Table 3.4: PTW collision partner

      Table 3.5 indicates that the majority of the accidents collected during this study involved a collision with an OV (80.2%). One hundred and forty-three of the cases (15.5%) involved only the PTW and PTW rider (e.g., a single vehicle accident).

Table 3.5: Number of OVs involved in the accident

Table 3.6 indicates that the majority of accidents involved only the PTW operator and that 8.6% of all cases involved a PTW passenger. There were no cases collected with more than one PTW passenger. Table 3.7 shows the number of fatal PTW accidents in which a passenger was present. Please note that the value presented in Table 3.7 does not represent the number of passengers who were killed, but rather the number of cases in which there was a fatality involved in the crash. There were only five cases in which the passenger was reported as the fatality.

       Table 3.6: Number of passengers on PTW

Table 3.7: Number of passengers on PTW (fatal accidents only)

Table 3.8 indicates that approximately three-quarters of all accidents occurred within an urban area. Approximately three quarters of all collected accidents took place in an urban area. An urban area was defined as a built up area with a population of 5,000 or more inhabitants. Similarly, a community was defined as rural if its population density is less than 150 people per square kilometre (OECD, 2001).

When distributed according to PTW legal category, the data shows that more of the L1 vehicles were involved in accidents which took place in an urban area than L3 vehicles. The distribution of accidents is directly related to the demographic characteristics of the sampling area for each research team.

 Table 3.8: Accident scene, type of area

 The distribution of the PTW collision partners by type of area is presented in Figure 3.1. The data indicates that in an urban area, the most frequent collision partner is a passenger car. This finding was certainly expected, as was the finding that the majority of truck/SUV