In recent years special attention has been paid to reducing the number of fatalities resulting from road traffic accidents. The ambitious target to cut in half the number of road users who are killed each year by 2010 compared with the 2001 figures, as set out in the European White Paper "European Transport Policy for 2010: Time to Decide" implies a general approach covering all kinds of road users. Much has been achieved, e.g. in relation to the safety of car passengers and pedestrians but PTW accidents still represent a significant proportion of fatal road accidents. More than 6,000 motorcyclists die annually on European roads which amounts to 16% of the EU-15 road fatalities. The European Commission therefore launched in 2004 a Sub- Project dealing with motorcycle accidents within an Integrated Project called APROSYS (Advanced PROtection SYStems) forming part of the 6th Framework Programme. In a first step, the combined national statistical data collections of Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain were analysed. Amongst other things parameters like accident location, road conditions, road alignment and injury severity have been explored. The main focus of the analysis was on serious and fatal motorcycle accidents and the results showed similar trends in all four countries. From these results 7 accident scenarios were selected for further investigation via such in-depth databases as the DEKRA database, the GIDAS 2002 database, the COST 327 database and the Dutch element of the MAIDS database. Three tasks, namely the study of PTW collisions with passenger cars, PTW accidents involving road infrastructure features, and motorcyclist protective devices have been assessed and these will concentrate inter alia on accident causes, rider kinematics and injury patterns. A detailed literature review together with the findings of the in-depths database analysis is presented in the paper. Conclusions are drawn and the further stages of the project are highlighted.