01472444

Component

The interaction of motorists and bicyclists, particularly during passing maneuvers, is an area of concern to the bicycle safety community as there is a general perception that motor vehicle drivers often do not share the road effectively with bicyclists. One potential countermeasure to address this concern is the use of a bicycle warning sign with a “Share the Road” plaque. This paper presents the results of a controlled field evaluation of this treatment, which involved an examination of driver behavior while passing bicyclists. A series of field studies were conducted concurrently on two segments of a high-speed, rural two-lane highway. These segments were similar in terms of roadway geometry, traffic volumes, and other relevant factors, except that one segment included centerline rumble strips while the other did not. A before-and-after study design was utilized to examine changes in motor vehicle lateral placement as they relate to the presence of the sign treatment. The signs were found to reduce the proportion of motor vehicles that passed bicyclists in the central lane position, providing evidence that the sign is effective in shifting motor vehicles away from the right edge of the travel lane. However, the sign treatment did not significantly affect the physical buffer distance between the bicyclists and passing motorists or the proportion of motor vehicles that crowded bicyclists as they passed. Vehicle type, bicyclist position, and the presence of centerline rumble strips or opposing traffic were also found to affect lateral placement during passing maneuvers.

This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ANF20 Bicycle Transportation.

01470560

13-0164

English

13p

2013

Transportation Research Board 92nd Annual Meeting

Digital/other

Figures; Maps; References; Tables

Behavior; Center lines; Cyclists; Drivers; Lateral placement; Passing; Rumble strips; Rural highways; Two lane highways; Warning signs

Bicycle safety; Share the road

Operations and Traffic Management; Pedestrians and Bicyclists; Safety and Human Factors; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning; I83: Accidents and the Human Factor

Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting 2013 Paper #13-0164

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Feb 5 2013 12:11PM