Effectiveness of daytime motorcycle headlights in the European Union

Motorcyclists are road users with a particularly high accident risk. Inparticular, motorcycle accidents are severe in nature, due to the relative lack of protection of motorcyclists once an accident takes place. Furthermore, given the young age of many victims, these accidents often result in a high loss of life expectancy for fatalities and high social-economic costs for severely injured motorcyclists. Therefore, even a moderate reduction in the number of accidents will result in relatively large benefits for the potential victims, and social-economic savings for society. This report describes a research on the effect of the use of daytime running lights by motorcycles in the European Union. In particular attention is directed at Austria; in this country a new law has been introduced in 1982. Using a generalised linear model, it is found that this law has reduced the number of victimised motorcyclists in daytime multiple accidents by about 16%. This result has been generalised in a rough manner for the expected effect of daytime headlights as a motor vehicle standard in the European Union, which predicts about 7% less fatalities and injured in the European Union