Maintenance priority associated with powered two-wheeler safety

Powered Two-Wheelers (PTWs) provide a suitable mode for a large portion of population in many cities due to rider’s personal convenience and the vehicle supposed easiness of manoeuvring. At the same time PTWs present serious safety issues compared to other motorized vehicles. This paper reports the main outcome of study carried out in Rome, where this mode is very popular and assesses the economic efforts to make infrastructure safer for PTWs. The methodology, extensively described in the paper, includes three steps: the accident analysis, the development of economic indicators of accidents costs, the maintenance priority. In the first step, the location of the PTWs local accidents are identified, then the accidents are analysed by means of the suitable indicators and, among these the Safety Potential – SAPO. Lastly, according to the results of the analysed indicators the need of infrastructure maintenance will be defined. As usually, SAPO is applied to rural areas, it has been adapted to describe the phenomena of the urban area in hand. As a result, the estimation of the saving potential to improve the infrastructure safety levels, thus reducing the amount of accidents, is presented, along with recommendations on how to upscale the SAPO at city level.