A Systematic Approach to Enhance Road Safety of Electric Pedal-Assisted Vehicles for Future Urban Mobility

At a global level, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated 1.19 million road traffic deaths in 2021; among these, cyclists account for 5% of fatalities. In that regard, a systematic and general approach to road safety through data analysis was proposed in the 1970s by the first administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Dr. William Haddon, who analyzed the relationship between the phases of a road crash and traffic factors to define the well-established “Haddon Matrix”. This approach is still of great relevance today. The study described in this book chapter extends Dr. Haddon’s methodology by engaging experts from different research fields. The uniqueness of this approach lies in its focus on technological, socio-cultural, and economic countermeasures for light pedal vehicles, such as e-bikes and e-cargo bikes, which to the best of authors’ knowledge, has never been addressed in previous analyses. This modified version of the Haddon Matrix is an asset tailored to be more effective than the original to address the challenges of the European mobility context.