Riders are especially good at keeping an eye on drivers because being able to anticipate their next move might be the trick that keeps us in one piece.
On the other hand, it is well established that not all drivers are watching out for riders, or much else, especially when they have a phone in their hand.
But what about driverless vehicles? Could they be more alert and attuned to the presence of vulnerable riders, pedestrians and motorcyclists, than humans?
Waymo, the autonomous taxi company that was spun out of the Google empire, is working at finding out and has just published a benchmark study of video recordings of such crashes.
Waymo's taxis have been shuttling around several US cities for a while now, picking up 150,000 paying passengers a week and the company is about to expand to new territory.
So far it has only had one crash involving a bike.
To get a better grasp of the causes of crashes involving vulnerable road users Waymo partnered with a dash cam company that has recordings of 805 million kilometres of driving.
The Waymo research team was able to identify and reconstruct 335 crashes involving vulnerable road users in six US cities – 126 pedestrians, 144 cyclists, and 65 motorcyclists. None were fatal.
Data consisted of anonymised video and sensor data (Global Positioning System and accelerometer) from vehicles equipped with Nexar dash cameras.
Most injuries were assessed as not serious. Those that were serious involved higher speeds and from the video evidence involved instances where the driver had their vision blocked, or there was unexpected behaviour by the vulnerable road user.
Waymo says that by better understanding these types of collisions, autonomous driver system operators can recreate them both in simulation and real-world testing, which could lead to safer decisions.
The analysis would serve as a starting point for pinpointing baseline driving risk associated with VRU collisions in dense-urban areas, which would in turn enable AV performance testing and evaluation.
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