Abstract
As a mobility of future, the popularity of personal mobility vehicles (PMs) is rapidly increasing worldwide. However, this boom in the use of PMs has resulted in a substantial number of accidents involving not only PM users but also other road users including pedestrians, bicyclists, and motor vehicle drivers. This study aims to explore the potential risk factors for the occurrence of PM-related accidents and the resulting injury severity using the Traffic Accident Analysis System (TAAS) of South Korea between 2017 and 2019. We found that PM–pedestrian accidents tend to occur on roads with wider sidewalks and bike lanes, possibly because the pedestrian–PM conflict increases in this road condition. There is still ongoing debate on whether it is appropriate for PMs to share the sidewalk with pedestrians. Some countries, including Korea, prohibit the use of PMs on sidewalks; however, in reality, this regulation is not well-observed because using PMs on roadways involves higher crash risk with motor vehicles. This study suggests one potential solution to ensure safety of PM users: expansion of bike lane infrastructure having physically separated bike lanes and sidewalks/motorways in addition to the formation and strict enforcement of appropriate safety rules for PM users.
Highlights
The use of personal mobility vehicles is rapidly increasing across the world as a convenient and fairly fast transportation mode for short-distance travel [1].Personal mobility (PM) include a broad range of micro-mobility devices such as electric bike, electric wheel, and electric scooter (e-scooter)
It is estimated by sales number of PM rather than actual number of its users due to the lack of data availability, considering the number of potential users, the accident incidence ratio for PM accidents has been rapidly increased compared to motor vehicle or bicycle accidents
This study explored the potential risk factors of PM-related accidents by comparing them with bicycle-related accidents and suggests that the conflicts between PMs and pedestrians on sidewalks should be appropriately addressed by enforcing safety regulations and rules for using PMs
Summary
The use of personal mobility vehicles (hereinafter, PMs) is rapidly increasing across the world as a convenient and fairly fast transportation mode for short-distance travel [1]. PMs include a broad range of micro-mobility devices such as electric bike, electric wheel (e.g., hoverboard, Segway), and electric scooter (e-scooter). Leg-kick-type e-scooter (i.e., electric kickboard) along with the shared e-scooter service is fast becoming the most popular type of PM in many countries, including South Korea [2,3]. Being micro-mobility devices supported by electric energy, PMs can reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by automobiles by providing last-mile solution to improve the convenience of public transit [4,5,6]. In the U.S, the number of e-scooter-related injuries was 4583 in
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