Understanding External Factors and Workload’s Impact on Cyclist Safety

Project Description

The Federal Highway Administration is encouraging states to adopt “Complete Streets” which has motivated many states to start mandating “Complete Streets” policies. Hence, there is an urgent need to accelerate and advance the research on cyclists’ behavior because policies empower the construction of active transportation infrastructure while guidelines and data to guide and understand cyclist behaviors have not caught up yet. Given the previous background, the main objective of this research is to collect data that describe cyclists’ behavior in simulation and field environments. Then create a naturalistic cycling database and continue to update it. The collected data is meant to help understand different cyclists’ behavior, perception, and workload when operating under different conditions, infrastructural situations, and diverse cyclists. The prospect collected data include but are not limited to reaction times, expressions of visibility, and quantification of safety and comfort. We want to utilize the outcomes of the previous objective to develop cycling’ models for design and safety by identifying Albuquerque’s cycling infrastructure weaknesses from human factors’ perspective and suggest possible improvements. In other words, identifying the vulnerability of Albuquerque's cycling infrastructure which will be translated into safety countermeasures.