Are flimsy bike lane bollards actually safer for cyclists? Flexible wands lead to fewer and less serious bike crashes than rigid posts, vehicle inspection researchers claim

While flimsy plastic bike lane bollards are often decried by cyclists for failing to provide adequate protection from motor traffic, a recent study from Germany has found that flexible posts can lead to fewer and less serious crashes for cyclists than their more rigid counterparts.

According to DEKRA, a Berlin-based company specialising in vehicle inspection and automotive testing and crash research, rigid bollards and posts installed on cycle lanes for protection and segregation purposes can instead pose a high crash risk, and can have serious consequences if struck by people on bikes, even at relatively low speeds.

As part of DEKRA’s ‘Traffic Environments for People’ road safety report for 2024, Markus Egelhaaf, a crash researcher for the German organisation, noted that bollards and other traffic-calming measures have an important function on roads, delineating space between motor and cycle traffic, but can also “present obstacles that cause accidents or worsen the consequences of accidents”.

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In order to assess the risks posed to cyclists by different types of bollards, DEKRA conducted two identical collision tests at its Crash Test Centre in Neumünster.

During the test, two three-wheeled e-cargo bikes, both with dummies in the saddle, were transported at around 15 to 16mph, one against a flexible wand and the other against a rigid one.

“In the test against the rigid post, there was a strong deceleration that threw the dummy from the saddle towards the handlebars,” Egelhaaf said in his analysis of the test.

“The bollard buckled and then acted as a ramp. The rear of the bike was lifted up, throwing the dummy off and causing the bike to tip over.

“In a real-life situation, the person riding the bike would have suffered serious injuries.”

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Meanwhile, in the test with the more flexible bollard, the bike simply rolled over it before the post reverted back to position. The researchers also noted that there was no significant slowing down of the cargo bike and that the dummy remained in the saddle, which – if conducted using a real cyclist – would have meant that they retained control of the bike.

“Another advantage of flexible bollards is that, in the event of a collision with a motor vehicle, both the damage to the infrastructure and to the impacting vehicle are kept to a minimum,” Egelhaaf added.

The results of the crash tests, DEKRA say, highlight the advantages of flexible wands when used to segregate bike lanes from motor traffic, and to prevent drivers from entering, parking on, and blocking cycling infrastructure.

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Noting a similar study from 2017 which found that replacing steel rigid posts with plastic ones significantly reduced the risk of injury to motorcyclists, Egelhaaf said: “But even at the comparatively low speeds of pedestrians and cyclists, rigid objects can act as a dangerous obstacle. This is something we see time and again in accidents.

“Due to the increasing speed of bicycles and greater width of cargo bikes, we have to expect that such accidents will happen more often.”

The researcher concluded that, to ensure safety, it is important that bollards can be easily seen in all light and weather conditions by using appropriate colouring and implementing a suitable minimum height, before recommending that the use of flexible bollards should be considered whenever possible.

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While automotive test researchers in Germany appear in favour of introducing plastic wands on every bike lane, earlier this year cyclists in Bristol pointed out that one of the city’s infamously unprotected cycle lanes has been rendered “pointless” by drivers constantly knocking over the flimsy bollards used to ‘segregate’ the infrastructure from traffic – in order to park their vehicles at the roadside.

The cycle lane on Park Row in Bristol has been regularly featured over the years on road.cc, with one cyclist telling us in December 2022 that the route looked like "the aftermath of a Harry Potter battle” with “broken wands everywhere”, as the plastic segregation was easily knocked off the road by motorists parking in the cycle lane.

However, since then, Bristol City Council has launched a project to make Park Row and three other streets “safer and more pleasant” for active travel journeys by committing to installing “more resilient” bollards.

The council hopes the works will address complaints from cyclists about the ineffectiveness of plastic floppy wands in offering adequate protection and preventing drivers parking in the infrastructure – but we’re not sure if they’ll be able to curry favour with German car crash testers.