ABSTRACT
Over approximately ten years in France, the proportion of motorcyclists killed rose from 9.6 per cent in 1994 to 14.2 per cent in 2003, and from 9.4 per cent in 1994 to 13.6 per cent in 2003 for those injured (Filou et al., 2005). In Europe (data from 14 European countries), the percentage of motorcycle rider and passenger fatalities was 16.1 per cent of the total number of road accident fatalities in 2006 (Leitner et al., 2008). In the MAIDS (Motorcycle Accident In-Depth Study) study, researchers characterized the nature and causes of motorcycle crashes in order to identify several categories of factors that can contribute to a crash. Human error (for perception/attention, comprehension, decisions, behaviour) was one of these categories and the primary cause of motorcycle crashes. In accidents where human error was identified as the primary cause of the collision, 35.6 per cent were the result of a lack of attention and/or perception on the part of the car driver (compared with 11.9 per cent caused by error on the part of the motorcycle rider). One explanation that could be advanced for accident rates among motorcyclists is their poor visibility to other drivers (Williams and Hoffmann, 1979; Shinar, 2007). In this study we present four hypotheses which may explain, at least in part, twowheeled motorized vehicles’ lack of visibility for other drivers. The first of these is based on the low sensory conspicuity of two-wheeled motorized vehicles. The second hypothesis is based on the lack of cognitive conspicuity of such vehicles for other drivers. And the two remaining hypotheses postulate the existence of individual differences in drivers’ visuo-attentional abilities and ocular behaviour. These hypotheses were all tested as part of the European project (the 2BeSafe Project, number 218703), some of whose results have already been published (Rogé et al., 2012).
