Investigating the reasons behind the intention to report cycling crashes to the police and hospitals in Denmark

- Crash under-reporting is a phenomenon known in its quantity and not in its reasons.
- Its reasons are postulated from literature on incident reporting in various contexts.
- Police distrust and medical consultation aversion affect crash under-reporting.
- Police distrust and family distress affect time allocation to other activities.
- Time allocation to other activities lead to crash reporting being considered useless.

This study explores the factors underlying the reporting intentions of cycling crashes by looking at barriers to reporting from other contexts and eliciting them via a survey and a structural equation model (SEM). The barriers consist of the attitude that crash reporting is useless, the preference to allocate time to other activities, the concerns about family distress and social image, the distrust in the police, and the medical consultation aversion. The survey elicited the reasons as well as socio-economic characteristics, cycling habits and last crash experience of cyclists, and yielded 1512 complete responses that were used for SEM estimation. The empirical analysis revealed that: (i) distrust in the police and medical consultation aversion are related to the reporting intentions both directly and indirectly through the attitude that crash reporting is useless and the preferences to allocate time to other activities; (ii) medical consultation aversion has a higher weight than the distrust in the police in demotivating cycling crash reporting intentions; (iii) the reasons are all strongly related to cyclists' characteristics and last cycling crash characteristics; and (iv) information provision regarding the societal benefits of crash reporting is important for increasing the reporting rate.