BikeSAFER: Final Report

Rapport, 2013

BikeSAFER has been an important milestone for Chalmers and SAFER offering a fertile ground for new national and international collaborations and providing a stable foundation for new projects. The naturalistic cycling data from BikeSAFER is presently unique in the world and strengthen the Swedish leading role on collection and analysis of naturalistic data worldwide. Analyses from BikeSAFER, which are currently under review by several international scientific journals, have already started to drive future projects and collaborations in Sweden, Europe, US, China, and Australia where connections have been already established with SAFER partners, GDV/University of Munich, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, Tongji University, and University of South Wales, respectively. For instance, one of the bicycles from BikeSAFER is currently in Ann Arbor (MI), USA as part of Safety Pilot (18M$; largest collection of wireless vehicle data in the world) collecting naturalistic cycling data including beaconing from 3000 motorized vehicles, 10 motorcycles, and several road side units in the largest cooperative environment worldwide. One of the major strengths of naturalistic studies is the possibility to reuse the collected data. In this respect, BikeSAFER created a snapshot of the cycling situation in Göteborg which can serve new analyses and as a baseline for future studies. A few projects orbited around the naturalistic cycling data from BikeSAFER. The BikeCOM project in the Master for Automotive Engineering at Chalmers made use of BikeSAFER data to develop a smartphone application for cycling safety1. Another project, BikeSING2, has been using BikeSAFER data in combination with data from STRADA, insurance (IF), and exposure (Göteborgsstad) to cast light on single‐bicycle accidents. The new project e‐ BikeSAFE, partly sponsored by Trafikverket, will use BikeSAFER data to compare traditional bicycle to new electrical bicycles in order to determine the impact of electrical bicycles on traffic safety; whereas the BikeSING2 project will now extend the work of BikeSING to new datasets. BikeSAFER was accepted as a SAFER associated project. As such, BikeSAFER progresses were presented regularly at the meetings of the Traffic Safety Analysis competence area. These occasions favored a more close interaction with other actors interested on cycling safety such as: Göteborgsstad, VTI, IF, Volvo Cars, Autoliv, Viktoria Institutet, and Trafikverket. For instance, extra funding from Trafikverket enabled a larger collection of data in BikeSAFER compared to the original plan. The SAFER network was used to advertise an International Workshop on Naturalistic Cycling Analysis, which is largely based on the results from BikeSAFER and will be hold at SAFER on September 3rd 2013 as a satellite event of the Driver Distraction and Inattention Conference. This report presents the main scientific results from BikeSAFER and shows how naturalistic cycling data can explain accident causation, cyclist behavior including interaction with other road users, and bicycle dynamics. The results from this report are important for policy makers and city planners as they offer new insights into cyclist behavior in relation to traffic safety, infrastructure design, and adherence to traffic rules. In addition, the results from this project can guide the development of intelligent countermeasures as demonstrated by the BikeCOM project. Finally, the results presented in this report have been or will be presented to several national and international conferences including Transportforum and the Nationell Konference i Transportforskning.