Pedestrian and Bicyclist Trespassing Impacts on Rail Grade Crossings Safety and Mobility

Improving the Denominator of Safety Rankings for Bicyclist and Pedestrian Safety.

Active transportation increases physical activity and improves health, yet rising pedestrian and bicyclist deaths are a growing public health concern. In North America, regional agencies allocate transportation investments to support safe walking and bicycling. While comparing crash statistic across regions is standard, accurate safety assessment requires exposure data, or the volume of active transportation users, to determine crash rates. Calculating spatial variation in crash rates is difficult given the lack of spatially detailed, regionally extensive exposure data. Our goal is to develop a method to compare bicycling and pedestrian safety between cities, to inform decisions on where investments are most needed to reduce injury and death. We measured exposure as miles walked or biked in California's 15 largest cities, using a validated model and data from the US Census, National Household Travel Survey, OpenStreetMap, and a statewide crash database. We performed linear regression with exposure and crashes, ranking cities by safety based on residuals. Higher positive residuals indicated less safe cities for active transportation. Including exposure shifted which cities had the highest safety risks for bicyclists and pedestrians. Safety differences were greatest in cities with high percentages of Hispanic residents, where crash-to-volume ratios showed unsafe conditions. Our method enables robust regional assessment of bike and pedestrian safety, allowing health departments and planners to identify where infrastructure investments can effectively prevent injuries and deaths, reduce health disparities, and create environments supporting active living. Our approach is scalable to major population centers nationwide, supporting evidence-based decisions that protect public health.

Geometric and operational determinants of motor vehicle-bicycle overtaking on Brazilian urban roads.

OBJECTIVE Overtaking maneuvers between motor vehicles and bicycles (OVB) represent a critical hazard for cyclists due to required lateral clearances and vehicle speeds. This study aims to evaluate the OVB process in urban environments, focusing on the main geometric and operational attributes that influence cyclists' objective road safety indicators. METHODS A quasi-naturalistic observational study was conducted on urban roads in Fortaleza, Brazil, using an instrumented bicycle. Data on vehicle speed, lateral passing distance, lane configuration, vehicle type, and the presence of adjacent traffic were collected across 1,075 overtaking maneuvers. Statistical analyses were performed to assess the impact of these attributes on safety indicators. RESULTS Analysis revealed that 76% of observed passing maneuvers violated the Brazilian national recommendation of maintaining a minimum lateral distance of 1.50 m. The presence of cycling infrastructure and the absence of traffic in adjacent lanes were significantly associated with greater passing distances. Furthermore, a behavioral compensatory threshold was identified at a 0.85-meter lateral distance: drivers modulated speed as a risk-mitigation mechanism only during critical clearances, whereas no speed adjustments were observed at the 1.50-meter legal threshold. CONCLUSIONS A vast majority of drivers fail to comply with recommended passing distances, highlighting the need for targeted infrastructure and operational interventions. The existence of dedicated cycling facilities effectively improves lateral separation. Moreover, drivers adapt speed only under extreme proximity (under 0.85 m), demonstrating that legal limits alone do not induce safer driver behavior without structural or physical support.

Speed and Lane Change Characteristics of Motorcycles at Priority Junction

Motorcycles are Indonesia’s predominant mode of transportation and contribute to a substantial share of road traffic accidents. The research aims to identify key behavioural factors contributing to motorcycle-related conflict risks at intersections and to propose evidence-based safety interventions. This study analyzed speed characteristics with varying degrees of disruption that motorists would experience at the intersection. These disruptions were categorized into high, low, no disruption, and left-turn movements. High disruption was defined as vehicles stopping in the middle of the intersection as motorcyclists approached, while low disruption was defined as vehicles preparing to enter the intersection from minor roads. In addition to speed characteristics, this study also observed lane-changing behavior when disruptions occurred at the intersection. To obtain detailed data, drone-based cameras were used for observations, and the results were validated against radar speed measurements. The results show that 67.94% of riders exceed the 60 km/h speed limit during the morning period, while 33.27% exceed it in the afternoon, indicating clear temporal differences in operating speeds. Approximately 85 per cent of lane-changing manoeuvres occur within 20 metres of the conflict point, reflecting short decision distances that increase collision risk. Riders also exhibit assertive gap-acceptance behaviour, often requiring main-road vehicles to adjust their speed. Statistical validation confirms that there is no significant difference between drone-derived and radar-based speed measurements, demonstrating the reliability of the drone-based methodology. Based on these findings, the study recommends targeted speed management measures, including automated enforcement and the use of traffic-calming devices; improved lane discipline through more precise road markings and selective physical separation; and junction design enhancements, such as motorcycle waiting areas and advanced stop lines. These measures can improve motorcycle safety at priority junctions and support more efficient and predictable urban traffic operations.  

Analyzing roadway factors influencing the severity of non-motorized road users' crashes in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

As U.S. cities expand multimodal transportation networks and pursue Vision Zero goals, crash severity among pedestrians and bicyclists remains a critical public safety challenge. Charlotte, NC, offers a timely case study given its rapid urban growth, rising active transportation demand, and commitment to Vision Zero. This study investigates the human, behavioral, and environmental determinants of pedestrian and bicyclist crash severity in Charlotte, North Carolina, using a five-year crash dataset (2019–2023). Binary logistic regression was applied after evaluating and rejecting ordinal and multinomial approaches due to proportional odds violations and class imbalance. Two models were developed: a primary cause (behavioral) model and an environmental and primary cause model. Crash records were drawn from the Highway Safety Information System (HSIS), supplemented with historical weather data and site inspection to address missing values. The behavioral model found that crashes with no identified contributing circumstance had 2.32 times higher odds of severe injury compared to human-attributed crashes. This association is best interpreted as a crash-documentation artifact, as it attenuates to non-significance once road design and road-user type are controlled. The extended environmental model achieved an AUC of 0.78 (95% CI 0.74–0.82). Daylight reduced severe crash odds by 66%. Divided roads with positive median barriers increased severity risk more than twofold (OR = 2.52). Each additional travel lane raised severity odds by 18%. Urban locations and intersections were also statistically significant predictors, and bicyclists faced substantially lower severity odds than pedestrians (OR = 0.24). Infrastructure design (particularly road division, lane count, and lighting), is a stronger predictor of severe crash outcomes than behavioral fault assignment. Findings support targeted infrastructure interventions in Charlotte’s Vision Zero and active transportation planning efforts.

Bicyclist overtaking in naturalistic riding data: Speed, clearance, and implications for injury risk.

OBJECTIVE Motor vehicle passing speed and lateral clearance jointly determine both bicyclist injury risk and perceived safety during overtaking events. Most prior studies have examined these factors separately and/or in limited settings. Real-world evidence describing how passing speed and clearance interact across heterogeneous roadway contexts remains limited. This study evaluates high-resolution naturalistic overtaking data within a kinetic-energy injury framework to evaluate whether roadway context and bicycle infrastructure modify both passing speed and lateral clearance, and whether spatial compensation meaningfully offsets energetic exposure. METHODS Following institutional review board approval, naturalistic cycling data were collected from six commuter cyclists riding as normal using a sensor suite including cameras, lidar, rear-facing radar, GPS, and inertial measurement unit. Approximately 9,900 km of riding were recorded over four months. Overtaking events were detected and characterized using time-synchronized radar and lidar data, yielding 8,753 passes with reliable vehicle speed estimates after quality filtering. Overtaking events were map-matched to OpenStreetMap roadway attributes and supplemented with image-based manual coding to classify functional class, posted speed limit, lane count, centerline configuration, and bicycle infrastructure type. Ordinary least-squares regression models with participant-clustered standard errors were applied to evaluate infrastructure effects and speed-distance relationships, including interactions with driver speeding behavior. RESULTS Passing speed varied substantially across roadway contexts, increasing with functional class and posted speed limit. Mean passing speed ranged from approximately 10 m/s (residential roads) to nearly 15 m/s (primary and four-lane facilities). In contrast, lateral clearance varied modestly across contexts, with mean values generally between 2.2 and 3.0 m and substantial overlap among categories. After adjustment for roadway characteristics, standard painted bicycle lanes were associated with reduced passing distance (β = -0.31 m) and higher passing speed (β = +1.36 m/s) relative to roads without bicycle accommodation. Shoulders were associated with the highest passing speeds and no meaningful increase in clearance. The overall compensation slope, defined as the increase in lateral clearance with increasing speed, was small: 0.016 m per 1 m/s (∼2.8 inches per 10 mph). Modest but statistically significant compensation was observed among drivers exceeding the speed limit and on higher-speed, higher-capacity roadways. CONCLUSIONS Roadway context strongly influenced passing speed, whereas lateral clearance adjustments were comparatively small and inconsistent. Across various naturalistic environments, lateral clearance did not increase proportionally at higher speeds. On-road bicycle infrastructure without accompanying speed management did not reliably reduce high-speed passing and, in some contexts, was associated with closer overtaking. These findings demonstrate the need for vehicle speed reduction and improved separation of bicycles from motor vehicle traffic to reduce crash injury risk.

of road restraint systems on the level of road safety – polish experience