Bicycle Safety
What is Safety?
- Freedom from injury caused by
- Falls
- bicyclist errors
- defective road surfaces
- foreign objects
- Collisions with
- stationary objects
- moving objects
- animals
- pedestrians
- vehicles
- Approaches to improving Safety
- Mitigation
- Prevention / Avoidance
- High quality facilities
- Better user behavior
- Experienced cyclists have much better accident rate
What is a Bicycle?
- Definitions
- Dictionary
- A vehicle consisting of ...
- N.C. Statues, Motor Vehicles chapter
- ... bicycles shall be deemed vehicles and ... shall be subject to the provisions of this Chapter
- What is a Bicycle not?
- A Pedestrian Enhancement Device
- Just a toy
- What is a Bicyclist?
- A Human Powered Vehicle driver
- What is a Bicyclist not?
Accidents
- Cyclists cause most reported accidents
- The majority of bike accidents are falls
- Surface defects are a large factor
- The highest injury rate per mile is on unpaved surfaces
- Car-bike & bike-bike collisions each account for about ~1/6 of accidents
- Vast majority of car-bike collisions occur at intersections
- where a car or bike driver violates the right-of-way of crossing traffic
- Bicycle hit from behind by car
- can be very serious
- are rare (8.6%), particularly in urban areas during daylight (7%)
- Cyclists can learn to avoid ~80% of the accidents that affect most adult cyclists
- For example, wrong-way cycling on sidewalks increases accident risk by 430%
Traffic Engineering (TE)
- Three fundamental TE principles
- Uniformity
- Help users to act in a similar manner in similar situations
- Simplicity
- Simpler traffic flows are safer
- Cooperation
- The safest way to share the road
- Segregation by vehicle type
- creates exceptions
- increases complexity
- prejudges drivers of certain types of vehicles as uncooperative
- Type discrimination is often present in
- Traffic rules
- Violations of TE principles
- Segregated Facilities
- Have higher accident rates
- Devices
- Traffic signals that ignore bikes
Overview: The Rules of the Road
- Provide for reasonably safe and efficient travel for two classes of highway users
- Pedestrians
- Drivers of vehicles
- The rules take into account
- user limitations
- people cant look back easily
- fundamental operational difference
- pedestrians can almost instantly
- stop
- reverse
- move sideways
- Each class has a unique set of rules
- fundamental operational differences
- The vehicle rules do not discriminate by
- type of power
- size
- weight
- speed
Overview: Rules, cont.
- Transportation system safety is based on mutual cooperation among users
- Cooperation is easier when all drivers use the Vehicle Rules (VRs)
- Use the VRs to share the road while
- minimizing the right-angle collision hazards experienced by pedestrians
- maximizing the efficiency of vehicular travel
- While open vehicles (such as bicycles) offer less collision mitigation than enclosed vehicles,
- the odds of avoiding a collision are not improved by operating by rules designed for a different class of user
- Once a driver has decided to operate where other vehicles can also travel, the safest technique is to
- "merge with the herd" and
- operate according to the Rules
The Rules of the Road for Drivers
- First come, first served
- Each driver has a "safety zone"
- Longer in front than sides & rear
- Yield to others safety zones
- Drive on the right-half of the roadway
- except for passes or left turns
- Yield to traffic that has right of way
- When moving sideways
- When crossing higher capacity road
- When turning left, to opposite way traffic turning right or straight
- Turn positioning
- Before turning right, merge right
- Before turning left, merge to the left side of your half of the roadway
Rules of the Road, cont.
- Intersection positioning
- In a multiple-destination lane
- Position according to destination
- Near right to go right
- Near left to go left
- Near center to go straight
- Multiple lanes to your destination
- Select the one furthest to the right that serves your destination
- Speed positioning
- While proceeding at less than the legal maximum speed limit
- When there are two or more clearly marked traffic lanes
- Drive in the right-hand lane then available for thru-traffic
- Otherwise
- as close as practicable to the right side of the roadway
9/10/01 Bruce Rosar Page #