Geographic Age and Gender Representation in Volunteered Cycling Safety Data: A Case Study of Bikemaps.org
There has been growing interest in using volunteered cycling data collected over the Internet, such as route data from fitness tracking applications and route mapping smartphone applications, as a compliment to traditional data collection approaches for active transportation planning. In particular, cycling safety data from traditional sources are limited since bike crashes are under-reported and there are no central mechanisms for recording near misses. BikeMaps.org is a globally available website to collect volunteered cycling safety data about previously unrecorded near misses and collisions. The goal of this paper is to understand how age and gender are related to the use of BikeMaps.org compared to broader ridership and the geographic distribution of incidents for the Capital Regional District (CRD), British Columbia, Canada. Males aged 24-35 reported more incidents than other cohorts, which had similar relative proportions to the regional cycling population in origin-destination survey data. In general, there were higher levels of interaction with the website by younger people (i.e. submitting incidents vs. viewing incidents). Females and people under 35 years of age reported more incidents in central urban areas. People over 35 years of age reported incidents that were more spatially dispersed and covered a broader extent. Planners can use volunteered geographic information (VGI) as a compliment to existing data, such as records of serious incidents in hospital records, but should consider that the demographic representation and geographies of use relate to both the use of technology and cycling characteristics.
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Supplemental Notes:
- This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ABJ35 Standing Committee on Highway Traffic Monitoring.
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Corporate Authors:
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Authors:
- Ferster, Colin Jay
- Nelson, Trisalyn
- Winters, Meghan
- Laberee, Karen
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2017-1-8 to 2017-1-12
- Date: 2017
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: Digital/other
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 11p
- Monograph Title: TRB 96th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Bicycle crashes; Bicycling; Data collection; Demographics; Safety; Websites (Information retrieval)
- Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01622554
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 17-01439
- Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
- Created Date: Jan 17 2017 9:47AM