Crash Histories, Safety Perceptions, and Attitudes Among Virginia Bicyclists

Cycling injury and fatality rates are on the rise, yet there exists no comprehensive database for bicycle crash injury data. Widely used for safety analysis, police crash report datasets are automobile oriented and widely known to under-report bicycle crashes. This research is one attempt to address gaps in bicycle data in sources like police crash reports. A survey was developed and deployed to enhance the quality and quantity of available bicycle safety data in Virginia. The survey captures bicyclist attitudes and perceptions of safety as well as bicycle crash histories of respondents. The results of this survey most notably show very high levels of under-reporting of bicycle crashes, with only 12% of the crashes recorded in this survey reported to police. Additionally, the results of this work show that lack of knowledge concerning bicycle laws is associated with lower levels of cycling confidence. Count model results predict that bicyclists who stop completely at traffic signals are 40% less likely to be involved in crashes compared to counterparts who sometimes stop at signals. In this dataset, suburban and urban roads with designated bike lanes had more favorable injury severity profiles, with lower percentages of severe and minor injury crashes compared to similar roads with a shared bike/automobile lane or no designated bike infrastructure.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Standing Committee on Bicycle Transportation.
• Authors:
  • Robartes, Erin
  • Chen, T Donna
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2018-1-7 to 2018-1-11
• Date: 2018

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 15p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Attitudes; Bicycle crashes; Crash data; Crash reports; Cyclists; Data mining; Data quality; History; Injury severity; Perception; Safety; Surveys
• Geographic Terms: Virginia
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01658488
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 18-06427
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 31 2018 10:37AM